Last night, the gloves came out on X as Nicki Minaj and SZA exchanged words on the social media platform. The beef ignited a fire in the Barbz — Nicki Minaj’s fandom — which came to life to defend their queen to mock SZA. At the same time, SZA stans reacted by comparing SZA’s latest musical success to Nicki Minaj’s, claiming that SZA is more successful. But how did this all start? Here’s the breakdown.
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The beef started with SZA’s manager, Punch TDE (TDE stands for Top Dawg Entertainment, an independent record label), posting two words: “Broken Barbies,” the name of a song he was promoting by the artist iAMLYRIC. The song is linked underneath his post.
After seeing the post, Nicki Minaj took it as shade towards her and responded with:
“Lol. Y’all remember that man from TDE who kept bullying me on Twitter for no reason? We have the receipts. Lol. I never even responded to him. What was his name again, y’all? I’m going to give him a nickname. Ima call him “minus 30 million” from now on.”
She then made follow-up posts. One calling him out for bullying women and suggesting he would never have the same energy for a man. And another one where she defined the acronym TDE as “Tiny D*** Executive.”
So, how does SZA fit into this? Well, on a separate corner of X, SZA posted, “Mercury retrograde.. don’t take the bait lol silly goose.”
Perhaps shade to Nicki Minaj or maybe a reminder to herself that in astrology, when Mercury is in retrograde, it is a time of miscommunication. An astrology follower, SZA is known to believe in astrology and has posts that date back as far as 2015, where she posts about Mercury Retrograde.
However, if it’s Mercury Retrograde causing miscommunication issues, the “Super Bass” rapper took the bait.
“Go draw your freckles back on bookie. Liar Liar pants on fire. Sounding like fking dead dog,” Minaj posted.
Minaj’s response to SZA had the app go up in flames as their fandoms collided. SZA replied, saying, “I don’t give a f*** about none of that weird s**** you popping.”
The snooze singer then responded to the Barbz, who came to defend Nicki Minaj, and told them to gain some perspective and bark at a wall. She also posted a screenshot showing the success of her SOS tour after Barbz insinuated that she wouldn’t be able to have a successful solo tour. However, she soon bowed out of the beef and went back to posting about her music:
“Lemme go back to being calm, shy, and meek. Y’all have a blessed night! See you tomorrow for night 2 Paris!!”
The “Moment 4 Life” rapper, however, continued to make a series of posts calling SZA a bad singer, discussing her weight, her looks, and comparing her success against SZA’s.
As Nicki Minaj continued to go off and fans continued to defend her, many people online expressed sadness about how their once favorite rapper has become a “loser.”
“It’s so sad to see someone who was once so great become such a f*****’ loser like this my god. Her younger self would be so embarrassed of this behavior like,” posted one user.
“Growing up is realizing that Nicki, Drake & Wayne are some of the biggest losers in the rap game,” posted another.
“Go get a Grammy,” posted another user with pictures of all the women Minaj has had either rap or online beef with holding their Grammys.
There is a theory online that the majority of Nicki Minaj’s anger with the women she has argued with stems from the fact that they have received a Grammy before her.
“You’re 50 [Nicki Minaj is 42]… at what age are you gonna stop beefing with people on Twitter,” asked another user.
While the Barbz continue to ruthlessly defend their Queen, it looks like the majority of the internet is over the drama when it comes to Nicki Minaj and misses the days when the main topic was her music.
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