The media has pitted Nicki Minaj and Cardi B against each other for months now, and the highly publicized altercation from Friday, where Cardi B allegedly threw a shoe at Minaj at a Harper’s Bazaar NYFW party, has spiraled into further controversy. On Monday, the Queens-born rapper spoke out about the scuffle for the first time via her Queen radio show on Beats 1.
Cardi B was escorted out of the venue on Friday after the incident, and afterwards, she posted a note on Instagram accusing Minaj of making comments about her newborn daughter Kulture and parenting abilities. Minaj addressed the accusations by opening the show with a soundbite of Cardi. “Nothing is off-limits. I hate when some people come at me like, ‘Why you coming at kids for.’ I’m my mother’s baby.”
But Minaj said the accusations about Kulture are false. “I would never discuss anyone’s child. For someone to pin that on me…[that’s] because I’m the bad guy and they know people would believe them. I just want to let the world know that Onika Tanya Maraj will never has never speak ill of anyone’s child. I am not a clown, that’s clown shit.”
The show, which is two and half hours long, came with several other accusations from the Queen rapper, who referred to Cardi as a “disgusting pig” and claimed that “she has built her career off sympathy and payola.”
But perhaps most notably, Minaj resurfaced an ongoing criticism of Cardi B. In 2017, the Bronx-born rapper drew heat from fans after she was accused of referring to dark-skinned black women as “roaches.” Minaj brought up the controversy once again, and resurfaced the argument that Cardi is not black. “Oh, ‘cause she not black,” she said on the show. “’Cause we got receipts for that too. FYI, she refers to black women as monkeys and roaches.”
Later, Minaj claimed that Cardi B is an outsider in black culture and the hip-hop industry. “Do you know what it is to sit in your room for hours and days at a time writing raps? You came into my fucking culture. I never had to fuck a DJ to play my fucking songs. Calling black women ‘roaches.’”
It’s not the first time this incident has been used as a criticism of Cardi B; Azealia Banks famously dubbed Cardi a “caricature of a black woman” during an appearance on The Breakfast Club in 2017.
Tune into the rest of Queen Radio here, and see some of the comments from the episode below.