Gunna’s DS4Ever arrived on January 7 boasting appearances from the likes of Drake, Future, Lil Baby, 21 Savage and Chloe Bailey — an all-star cast that helped the album beat out The Weeknd’s Dawn FM for the top spot on the Billboard 200.
However, there was one A-list artist missing from the tracklist, despite Gunna’s best efforts to secure the collaboration.
In a new interview with The Dana Cortez Show, Nicki Minaj revealed the Atlanta rapper wanted her to appear on “P Power” (short for “Pussy Power”), but despite sitting with the song for months, she ultimately turned it down.
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According to Nicki, the track was simply too raunchy for her liking now that she’s a mother.
“Gunna came to my studio months ago and he asked me to get on his song ‘Pussy Power,'” she said. “I heard the beat and I went [crazy]. I was like, ‘This beat is outta here!’ No lie, I sat with the song for months and months and couldn’t bring myself to write to the record.
“It was like the moaning and the groaning on the track … I knew in order to get on a track like that I would have to be explicit and, in my opinion, I would have to really kill it and talk that real talk. And I wasn’t ready, I just wasn’t there.”
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“That’s just to tell you how being a mom has changed me.”
.@NICKIMINAJ talks about Gunna wanting her on his track "P*ssy Power"
pic.twitter.com/VUYaZ6AOs6— Female Rap Room (@girlsinrap) February 1, 2022
Nicki’s newfound approach has also influenced her own output, with the Young Money Queen revealing she rejected her label’s wishes to release a sexually explicit single while she was pregnant with her son, affectionately known as Papa Bear, in 2020.
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“My label wanted me to go full out with a single and everything when I was pregnant, and I couldn’t bring myself to put out a song about pussy and dicks and sucking and eating,” she said. “I couldn’t bring myself to put a record out like that while my son was growing in my body!”
“Nothing wrong with anybody who’s able to do it, but with me, I just felt in a very different, new space.”
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Despite Nicki Minaj‘s no-show, “P Power” still received an A-list assist from her Young Money cohort Drake. The song initially didn’t appear on DS4Ever when the album hit streaming services, but was added a week later.
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“I originally sampled Donna Summer,” Gunna explained of the delay. “I don’t even know her, because I’m so young. But she was a legend and her estate couldn’t get back in time for my album.”
One Atlanta rapper who has been successful in landing a Nicki Minaj collaboration is Lil Baby. The pair are set to join forces on a new single called “Do We Have a Problem?,” which drops Friday (February 4) along with a Benny Boom-directed music video.
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Baby’s verse certainly impressed Nicki, who admitted in a recent interview the 4PF rapper steals the show on the song.
“Lil Baby, he might have… ummm… he might have got me!” she said. “He pleasantly surprises me all the time. This particular record was just another moment when you could just tell the difference when somebody knows they’re here for a long time.
She added, “The way he pushed himself and his pen, I loved it. He bodied, bodied, bodied.”
