A History of Nicki Minaj’s Beefs: Celebrities Who Have Found Themselves on the Rapper’s Bad Side

Nicki Minaj has never been one to back down from a challenge

If there’s one vital lesson the music world has taught us over the years, it’s don’t mess with Nicki Minaj.

The rapper has cemented herself as a wig-loving, expletive-laden-lyric-delivering, no-nonsense force to be reckoned with. So, naturally, she’s had her fair share of feuds with other celebs.

The “Barbie Dreams” rapper has sparred with the likes of Miley Cyrus, Taylor Swift, Mariah Carey and more.

However, in April 2016, Minaj told Ellen DeGeneres that she regrets her past feuds with fellow stars, saying, “I’m a sweet person, and I don’t wanna be mean to people.” Nonetheless, that hasn’t stopped Minaj from carrying on the occasional feud.

Here is a list of stars who’ve found themselves on the rapper’s bad side.

Cardi B

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The first hints of tension between the pair began in the spring of 2017 when Minaj appeared to “like” a fan’s Instagram comment dismissing one of Cardi B’s rap verses. Things began to escalate the following summer after Cardi’s breakout single “Bodak Yellow” topped the charts and she signed with Atlantic Records.

Rumors of a feud continued to swirl as Minaj and Cardi offered guest vocals on various singles that could be construed as shade at the other — but both denied there was any bad blood.

“I mean, I don’t really want problems with anybody,” Cardi told Billboard in August 2017. “I don’t really got to do that whole industry beef.”

According to Minaj, the real beef began when they teamed up with Migos on “MotorSport” in October 2017. At the time, Cardi said in an interview that some lines in the track were changed last-minute before its release.

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“The only thing with Cardi that really, really, really hurt my feelings was the first interview she did after ‘MotorSport’ came out,” Minaj said in a Beats 1 radio interview in April 2018. “The first interview she did after ‘MotorSport’ came out, it just really hurt me. She looked so aggravated and angry and the only thing she said was, ‘Oh, I didn’t hear that. I didn’t hear that verse.’ I was like, what?”

A month later, the beef appeared to be squashed when Cardi and Minaj were photographed having what looked like a heart-to-heart at the Met Gala.

“I never was feuding with anybody; there was a misunderstanding,” Cardi later told Howard Stern of the meeting. “It’s just something that had to be talked about because it was an issue.”

Their tiff reignited in August 2018 when Minaj addressed Cardi on her Beats 1 Queen Radio show.

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“I didn’t know Cardi and I had an issue. To me, she may have taken an issue with things that I’ve said, but I’m not going to bite my tongue,” Minaj said. “You gotta have thick skin. People talk s— about me all the time. I don’t go around and tell people to stop posting me because I see one bad thing about myself.”

Shortly after, Cardi revealed that someone — seemingly Minaj — had blocked her on Twitter.

Then, Cardi and Minaj’s cold war finally boiled over into an all-out physical altercation at Harper’s Bazaar‘s ICONS party in N.Y.C. on Sept. 7, 2018. While the source said it initially looked like Cardi and Minaj “might hug it out” inside the party, suddenly “it all went down.”

“Cardi walked towards Nicki and all of a sudden Cardi started screaming something about her child. She was yelling, ‘Bitch you feisty. Bitch don’t talk s— about my child’ at Nicki,” the source recalled about Cardi, who is mom to daughter Kulture Kiari with husband Offset.

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Immediately following the incident, Cardi was escorted out by security while Minaj stayed inside. Cardi was seen leaving the party with a large lump on her forehead but no shoes.

“She left barefoot with her dress ripped and butt out,” the source said.

Cardi later wrote a long scathing Instagram post that did not mention Minaj by name but suggested Minaj had tried to sabotage Cardi’s career and also spoken badly about Kulture Kiari.

On Sept. 10, 2018, Minaj addressed the altercation on her Queen Radio show: “The other night I was part of something so mortifying and so humiliating to go through in front of a bunch upper echelon people who have their life together. I was in a Gaultier gown — off the motherf—— runway — and I could not believe how humiliated we all felt.” Minaj also went on to deny that she had ever spoken ill of Cardi’s infant daughter.

Remy Ma

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Minaj and Terror Squad rapper Remy Ma have been feuding for years — Minaj supposedly dissed Remy Ma on her track “Dirty Money” off a 2007 EP, in which she raps, “Tell that bitch with the crown to run it like Chris Brown” while sampling one of Ma’s Terror Squad songs, “Yeah Yeah Yeah.” Their rivalry reached another level in February 2017 when Ma dropped “ShETHER,” a 7-minute long diss track in which she accused Minaj of everything from infidelity to getting plastic surgery, which promptly set the Internet on fire and blew up the charts.

In March 2017, Minaj responded by dropping three tracks, including “No Frauds,” in which she teamed up with her Young Money label mates Drake and Lil Wayne. “You can’t be Pablo if your work ain’t sellin’ / What the f— is this bitch inhalin’? / Tried to drop ‘Another One,’ you was itchin’ to scrap / You exposed your ghostwriter / Now you wish it was scrapped,” Minaj rapped on the track (which alludes to “Another One,” Ma’s follow-up single, which didn’t get the same rapturous reception as “ShETHER”), before issuing a challenge to her rap rival.

“The greats took three months to respond to diss records. Queens don’t move on peasant time,” Minaj wrote in a now-deleted Instagram post, addressing the two weeks that she waited before responding. “Queens shut down Paris, then drop hits on #QueenTime… Been writing my own raps since I was 11. God knows. Next week I’ll beat Aretha [Franklin] for the most Hot 100 hits on Billboard by ANY woman in the world EVER in the history of music. Stay in your bum ass place. Jealousy gets you nowhere.”

She added a challenge to Remy Ma, too: “Now I got a countdown of my own for Sheneneh. You got 72 hours to drop a hit and I’ll give you half a million dollars if you can book ANY show or interview without mentioning the Queen name.”

Just as the bitter war of bars began to die down, both rappers fueled the feud fire in separate performances in June 2017.

At the BET Awards, Remy Ma took a shot at her rap rival as she took home the award for best female hip hop artist.

“Y’all bitches got fat while we starved / Shots in your ass, pads in your bras,” she rapped on stage. “Y’all some liars / It ain’t no facts in your songs / And yeah, that crown is coming back to the Bronx.”

Meanwhile, Minaj teamed up with 2 Chainz to perform their collab “Realize,” in which the superstar didn’t hold back when firing out her verse during the inaugural NBA Awards.

“You dude wrote an ether record / but I broke Aretha record,” Minaj rapped on stage.