Nicki Minaj just dropped her new track “Chun-Li,” during an interview with Zane Lowe on Beats 1. It’s not bad, although I am concerned that she thinks Chun-Li is the villain.
Nicki hasn’t recorded much solo music recently, and a lot of her features on other people’s tracks have sounded like she’s been asleep. While “Chun-Li” doesn’t reach the high heights of “Itty Bitty Piggy” or even “Super Bass,” it’s a respectable showing, and I’m into the beat. Given that she apparently finished recording this track yesterday, I’ll give her some props.
“I played the beat at like 3, 4 in the morning. I was about to go home. I had worked all day, I hadn’t slept for days probably. And this was only two days ago, and my producer texted me to come in,” Minaj told Zane Lowe before she premiered the track. “He played me a bunch of stuff, I heard this one and I was like ‘okay’” and I went in the booth. All of the melodies you’re about to hear, I did them in five minutes in the booth.”
The song is named after Chun-Li, a Street Fighter character that, like Minaj, is known for her thick thighs. Chun-Li is not, however, a villain, and in the line where this character is referenced, Minaj seems convinced that she is. “They need rappers like me,” she says during the bridge, “So they can get on their fucking keyboards and make me the bad guy, Chun-Li.” Chun-Li is actually a pretty clean cut cop character, but okay Nicki go off! She also says she’s, “been off, Lara been Croft,” after basically listing out all the designer clothes and luxury cars she owns and that reference tracks a little better.
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This isn’t the first time Nicki has gotten a little nerdy—she’s decked out in Wonder Woman cosplay on the cover of her third mixtape, “Beam Me Up Scotty.” She’s usually a little more accurate than this, though. Onika, if you want to get more familiar with Street Fighter I’m sure there’s a fight night in New York that would love to have you.
If you listen closely, you’ll hear a 24-year-old white guy tweeting right now that Cardi B is better than Nicki Minaj.
Click on that tweet, and you’ll find at least one response from somebody arguing the exact opposite. The Cardi vs. Nicki argument has brewed at least since Cardi topped the charts with her breakout single “Bodak Yellow” in September, and it’s reached a fever pitch in the six days since she dropped her debut album, Invasion of Privacy. It’s easy to see why people are so quick to lump both rappers into the same category: They were both raised in New York, they both did huge numbers with their debut albums, and … they’re both women.
That’s all that matters, right?
As reductive as the comparison sounds, those three elements have been more than enough for fans to incessantly pit Cardi and Minaj against each other. (Actually, forget about the album sales: People see “woman” and “rapper” in the same sentence, and they start drawing parallels.) Fans and haters alike have used social media to hype up the imaginary feud, despite the fact that both artists have publicly denied any bad blood, explicitly complimented each other’s work and, you know, appeared on a track together (Migos' “Motorsport,” which hit No. 6 on the Billboard Hot 100 last year).
Now, as Minaj returns to the music world with two new singles, “Barbie Tingz” and “Chun-Li,” some of those same fans and haters are bound to perceive it as an attempt to sabotage Cardi B’s first week sales for Invasion of Privacy. But Minaj’s new singles won’t hurt Cardi’s commercial bow. Instead, their new releases will benefit each other because they’ll force listeners to reckon with the fact that, yes, two female artists can release music during the same week and both succeed.
When Nicki Minaj dropped her debut album, Pink Friday, in 2010, it seemed like women finally had a formidable champion to root for in the rap world. Not since Missy Elliott nearly a decade prior had a female MC dazzled with spitfire raps, dizzying punchlines and the right pop sensibilities to send her to the top of the charts. Pink Friday debuted at No. 2 on the Billboard 200 with 375,000 copies in its first week, eventually topping the chart, while “Super Bass” became the sleeper hit of the summer, peaking at No. 3 on the Hot 100 and eventually going 8x platinum in the United States alone.
Minaj topped the charts again with her next album, 2012’s Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, while her 2014 full-length The Pinkprint peaked at No. 2. She sent four other singles into the Top 10 as well, falling just short of the top spot with her biggest hit, “Anaconda,” which peaked at No. 2. But despite all the platinum plaques, the Grammy nominations, the streaming records and the Forbes Hip-Hop Cash Kings appearances, Minaj’s success didn’t spark a paradigm shift in the rap world. She alone shouldered the burden for commercially viable female rappers, jostling for the same respect that her male counterparts commanded as a legitimate successor failed to materialize.
Enter Cardi B. The self-made Bronx native documented every step of her ascension up the ladder of stardom, from stripper to social media celebrity to reality TV personality to chart-topping rapper. Her debut Atlantic Records single, “Bodak Yellow,” has gone 5x platinum, making Invasion of Privacy eligible for a Gold certification from the RIAA the second it dropped. “Bodak” sales notwithstanding, Privacy is pacing for a No. 1 debut, and it’s easy to imagine several of its tracks contending for this year’s coveted Song of the Summer title.
With her brash personality, hilarious catchphrases and seemingly endless volley of solo hits and guest verses, Cardi B seems like the closest thing we have to a perfect star, created in an incubator and thrust out into the world ready to steal headlines. So it’s a shame that some people refuse to appreciate her on her own merit and instead feel compelled to stack her up against Minaj. Oh, Cardi has Chance the Rapper and SZA features on her debut? Minaj had Kanye West, Eminem, Rihanna and Drake on hers! Frankly, the comparisons are exhausting, petty and counterproductive.
The truth is, Minaj’s new singles won’t affect Cardi’s albums sales in any discernible way, since 1) they’re coming out almost a full sales frame later, and 2) they’re an entirely different medium (album vs. single, duh). And if fans are really concerned about their commercial prospects, get this: They can stream both artists at the same time. It takes roughly an hour to listen to "Barbie Tingz," "Chun-Li" and all of Invasion of Privacy in one sitting. You could do that three times in a row and make a grilled cheese sandwich in the time it takes to sit through Chris Brown’s Heartbreak on a Full Moon. I think we all know what the better choice is.
In a genre where different men can trade the top spot on the Billboard 200 every week, listeners still treat successful female rappers like a novelty, a pleasant but ultimately inferior change from the status quo. That myopic viewpoint inhibits people from allowing two women to thrive on the charts at the same time, instead prompting a slew of unnecessary and unproductive comparisons. But Cardi B and Nicki Minaj’s releases aren’t an excuse to pit the artists against each other. It’s an opportunity to celebrate their successes and allow them to flourish simultaneously.
It’s rare to see a woman dominate the rap game the way Nicki Minaj and Cardi B have. It’s nearly unprecedented to see two of them do it at once. Now, the public’s reaction will determine whether there’s room for more than two women to succeed at the same time.
After going radio silent on all social media channels in December, Nicki Minaj has reemerged with new music and a new, revealing interview. While her two new singles—"Chun-Li " and "Barbie Tingz "—have already sent fans into a tizzy, it's the candid interview, which aired live on Apple Music's Beats One Radio on Thursday, that's sparking loads of headlines about the rapper's past feuds. If there's one thing Onika Maraj isn't afraid of, it's drama, and she's been involved in quite a few kerfuffles as of late. In just the past year and a half, Minaj has feuded with Remy Ma , Drake , and, apparently now Cardi B, despite previous indications that the pair were at least on tentatively friendly terms
When asked if some of the pointed lines of "Chun-Li" refer to Cardi B, Minaj denied the claims, per Pitchfork , and stated that she wrote the song more than a year ago, long before Cardi's breakout hit "Bodak Yellow" had ever hit the radio waves. But that doesn't mean it's all love between the two New York City rappers. "I remember when I first came in the game...I would only be singing their praises and saying thank you," Minaj said of the female rappers who came before her, according to Pitchfork , seemingly implying that Cardi hadn't shown that same respect to her. "The first interview [Cardi] did, it just hurt me because she looked so aggravated and angry. She just kept saying she didn't hear [my verse on "MotorSport"]....I was like, 'What?'"
Minaj then recounted the making of "MotorSport," the Migos-led song that features both Minaj and Cardi. As she previously outlined on Twitter , Minaj again stated that she and Cardi B didn't appear in the video together because the former had a scheduling conflict, and that it "hurt her" that no one attempted to "clear the air" when fans speculated about a larger feud. "And you still did interviews just to paint Nicki as the bad person and play the victim," Minaj said of Cardi. "And that really, really hurt me, because I really fully supported her. And up until this recent interview she did [with Ebro Darden for Beats One], I had never seen her show love in an interview. And I can only imagine how many girls wished they could've been on a song with Nicki Minaj."
Cardi actually has claimed that rumors of a feud ) were the fan-fiction work of trolls and drama-thirsty fans, but apparently she wasn't exact enough to Nicki's liking. There's a bit of irony here in that a little before she blew up on the pop scene, one of Nicki's first big breakthrough moments among hip-hop fans was appearing in a posse track with another female rapper who shot her music video scenes separately. She jumped on a remix of Yo Gotti's "5 Star" alongside Trina, but the two female rappers never shared a scene in the video presumably because of scheduling conflicts. There were never rumors of a feud there, so maybe Minaj is just a bit bemused that drama is coming her way now that she's on the other end of the same situation.
In the same interview, Minaj also said that she felt trapped between her close friend and fellow Young Money rapper Drake and her then boyfriend Meek Mill during their feud , calling it "one of the hardest times of [her] career," adding, "At the time, I did love both of them...I felt so imprisoned in that moment." Minaj went on to note that, after a troubling time for all involved, the two gentlemen have since squashed their beef. "It was difficult to stay out of it. I was behind the scenes, wishing it wouldn't happen," she said. "I said, 'Don't do that.' I think, as artists, we all look back on things that we shouldn't have done. And that was one of those things [Meek] shouldn't have done. But he did it, and it is what it is. What I do know is that Meek and Drake have moved on from that."
Related: Cardi B and Nicki Minaj: A History of the Feud That Never Was
