‘I wouldn’t dare come on your stage and say something negative about Hot 97,’ Minaj says in heated radio interview.
Hip-hop beefs come and go, and while some battles are fought lyrically and others are resolved under wraps, once in awhile they need to be aired out on public radio. Nicki Minaj called in to New York City’s Hot 97 on Monday night to do the latter, and she demanded that her conversation with DJ Funkmaster Flex be aired uncut and unedited.
The YMCMB rapper was tuning in to address the controversy that started on Sunday when she pulled out of Hot 97’s annual Summer Jam concertin New Jersey after a brief tweet from Lil Wayne that read, “Young Money ain’t doing summer jam.” Word had gotten back to Weezy that Hot 97 personality Peter Rosenberg had disrespected Minaj, calling her single “Starships” “wack” and panning it for not being “real hip-hop.” To fans who were not at the show or watching the Summer Jam live stream, the first indication that things had gone sour were a series of tweets from Minaj’s account such as, “Wow. U ni–az just f—ed up history. But the President has spoken. #YMCMB.”
During their heated discussion, which opened with Flex admitting that they’d already been arguing for an hour, Nicki Minaj was adamant in insisting that Rosenberg chose the wrong time and place to voice his negative opinions. “It’s not about his opinion, because I have opinions about DJs on Hot 97 and I have opinions on Hot 97,” she said. “But when it’s about us uniting people [for] your show, I wouldn’t dare come on your stage and say something negative about Hot 97, leading up to that concert.”
“My fans at Summer Jam didn’t appreciate his comments, nor did my fans who were watching the live stream appreciate his comments,” she added. “This is streaming to the world. Nicki Minaj opened up that stream to show to kids in London and Paris. It was hosted on my website and those requests came from your station. I posted the links.”
Flex countered that Nicki was overreacting when she listened to Lil Wayne and pulled out of the show, and he accused her of riling up fans on Twitter before dealing with the issue internally. But Minaj wasn’t having any of it, maintaining that what Weezy says goes.
“I don’t go against the president of my label. Before I had New York radio, I had Wayne,” she said emphatically. “I will never go against Wayne. I can’t believe after all these years, he’s still teaching me. After a man goes onstage and disrespects me and tries to rile people up, I still was going on that stage, and shame on me. Lil Wayne gave me a valuable lesson in self-worth. He tweeted before he called me, and when I spoke to him he said, ‘Nick, we ain’t doing that show.’ ”
Minaj explained that the attack felt extra-vindictive since she was the only woman on the roster (but not because she was the only woman on the roster), and plenty of yelling and screaming took place, sometimes punctuated by Minaj repeating Flex’s name slowly, in an effort to calm him down.
One final issue that she needed to address was Flex’s earlier radio rant, when he defended Rosenberg and Hot 97 and made questionable remarks about her music sales. “When you give stats to the world, people listen to you, and it’s important that people know Nicki Minaj is actually out here selling records, singles and making money for Universal,” she said, rattling off the sales numbers she’s raked in withPink Friday and Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, topping it off with my favorite line, “I get money.”
It wouldn’t be completely accurate to say that things ended on a positive note, but it seems like Minaj had the upper hand here. Flex admitted that Rosenberg could’ve picked a better time to criticize her, and she still stuck by Wayne’s decision to pull her out of the show, reiterating, “This is my hometown. I wanted to come onstage for my fans, my Barbz, my babies.”
When Flex made one final joking attempt to get an apology out of her, you can probably guess the tone of her response. “Excuse me?” No radio station that allowed someone to disrespect me is getting an apology.”
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