Source: Johnny Nunez / Getty
As Nicki Minaj and Cardi B. have put their beef behind them, at least publicly, there are some folk who still seem hell-bent on stirring the pot and letting it fester.
On Sunday, after Cardi won the Grammy for Best Rap Album, BET tweeted this:
https://twitter.com/lilithoark/status/1095053506011189249
It was an attempt to be clever and solicit clicks and retweets. And in all honesty, given Nick Minaj’s behavior as of late, there’s a good chance that she was pressed by Cardi’s win. Still, BET shouldn’t be in the business of pitting one artist against another, particularly when those two artists are Black women. There’s a long, sordid history of that in various industries; and honestly, we don’t need a Black network promoting that same type of division.
And the decision becomes even less sound when you consider the fact that Nicki Minaj and Young Money were set to perform at the upcoming BET Experience.
Never one to be out-pettied Nicki Minaj responded to the tweet with a power play.
To add insult to injury, she shared that Lil Wayne was also pulling out of the show.
There were several people who came to Minaj’s defense and chastised BET for the tweet and its crassness.
In response to the backlash, BET issued this apology.
The woman who sent the tweet was fired. But Nicki Minaj, with her legions of fans, wanted people to know the exact person who sent the tweet, so she made sure to find the woman’s Instagram page and share that on Twitter as well.
I wanted to step outside the box and, for once, defend Nicki without hesitation. But it’s things like this, siccing her millions of fans to cyberbully and harass another Black woman online, that make her a hypocrite. She’s no better. In fact, using her power and influence to punch down, makes her worse. This type of celebrity-fueled bullying is a pattern for Nicki and ironically, the people who have born the brunt of its effects, losing their job, intense harassment, have been Black women.
It happened when Wanna Thompson, a Black woman writer, said that Minaj’s music needed to mature. As a result, she was bullied for months by Minaj’s fans. An experience that, as she told the New York Times, affected her 4-year-old daughter and left Thompson “physically drained and mentally depleted.”
BET should have never called Minaj’s legacy into question. Because truly, without her, Cardi B. wouldn’t enjoy the success she has today. Still, Minaj makes herself an easy target for these types of critiques and jokes by the way she responds so heinously to every criticism. This woman, the one who sent the tweet, was fired and Minaj still felt it important to post her picture and Instagram name on social media. Why? At this point, she knows what she’s doing. She wants punishment for people who speak out against her.
Perhaps she’s taking this Queen moniker, and the power it wields, a little too seriously.
See what other people had to say about the whole debacle, from people thinking Nicki is a hypocrite to others thinking BET f*cked up and more on the following pages.
