Thread by @onikasleaze, how the music industry has mistreated and wronged Nicki Minaj, the best [...]

how the music industry has mistreated and wronged Nicki Minaj, the best selling female rapper of all time

(a very much needed thread)

A quick summary of Nicki Minaj’s success:
• most successful female rapper of all time
• one of the best selling rappers of the decade (singles + features + albums)

DISCLAIMER: this is just what I have witnessed in the media these past few years and this is not meant to hurt anyone’s image - so no lawsuits please

Most of the (failed) efforts to destroy Nicki Minaj’s career took place in the recent years. However, Nicki, over the years, has fallen victim to bullying orchestrated by higher figures in the music industry. A great example of this is The Recording Academy (GRAMMYs).

The Recording Academy is famous for its Grammy Awards, which recognises achievements and talent within the music industry. A Grammy award is one of the most prestigious awards a recording artist can win. However, the Recording Academy isn’t new to controversy.

In the past decade, Nicki Minaj has earned 10 Grammy nominations but has yet to win any.
It’s interesting to note that she hasn’t earned a Grammy nomination since 2015.

As Minaj is the most successful female rapper of all time, fans were surprised to hear the rapper has yet to win a Grammy. When asked about it, Minaj claimed she had been blackballed by one of the Grammy producers and that she would talk about it soon.

Minaj claims the Grammy officials asked her moments before the 2012 show to cancel her performance, even though she already promoted the awards show. Ever since refusing to back out of her controversial Grammy performance, she has been blackballed by Grammy Producer, Ken Ehrlich.

ATLANTIC RECORDS: over the year, several female rappers have come out and accused Atlantic Records of offering them huge sums of money in return of dissing Nicki Minaj. Female rappers Lady Leshurr and Cupcakke have come forward with these allegations.

Female rapper Azealia Banks has also come forward and claimed that Craig Kallman (CEO of Atlantic Records) has a ‘very dangerous obsession with Nicki Minaj’ and how he engineers artists to go against ‘talented black women’ who refused to ‘work with him’ (Nicki Minaj)

Nicki Minaj addressed some of these allegations at the time. She reacted to Lady Leshurr’s 2017 claims by revealing how Atlantic Records have ‘been looking for a test dummy for years’

In 2017, everyone witnessed L&HH star Cardi B’s very sudden and quick rise to fame. She signed to Atlantic Records in 2017. Music exec, Brooklyn Johnny, spoke to Billboard about how Cardi B (the woman whose career he developed) would be Nicki Minaj’s competition.

WATCH: Azealia Banks speaking about how Atlantic Records ‘created and launched Cardi B’ to take Nicki Minaj down because the music execs thought Nicki Minaj had too much power

LACK OF RADIO SUPPORT: for the past couple of years now, Minaj has been blackballed by US radio stations (definition of ‘blackball’ is below). In terms of radio, being blackballed is when stations are told not play an artist’s records at all.

Since the beginning of the rollout of her 4th album Queen, Minaj has received little to no radio support for her singles. Minaj’s features + singles like Ganja Burn, Hard White, Good Form, Megatron and Yikes were extremely unsuccessful on US Radio.

In 2019, Nicki Minaj addressed the radio blackball rumors on her ‘Barbie Goin Bad’ freestyle, saying:

‘you know radio already tried to blackball a b***h’

Days later, DJ Envy confirms on The Breakfast Club that he was infact one of the DJs blackballing Nicki Minaj.

For those who are unaware, radio support does count for Billboard Hot 100 charts. An artist who receives massive radio support will perform better and stay more stable on the charts, compared to someone with minimal radio support.
FACT: an artist could chart with radio ALONE.

An anonymous industry insider wrote on this popular celebrity gossip blog (Crazy Days and Nights) about how a certain ‘foreign born’ female rapper is being blackballed because the industry wants her to keep quiet on what goes on behind the scenes

Interestingly, that was written on July 9th 2019 (check previous pic). July 9th 2019 was 1 day after Billboard announced that Nicki Minaj’s single ‘Megatron’ dropped 72 spots down the Hot 100 on its 2nd week (from #20 to #92).

Crazy Days and Nights is a celebrity gossip blog which has both truth AND fan fiction to it. The blog is known to report on things that the GP would find out about years later.

I think it’s also important to note that 6ix9ine and Nicki Minaj’s ‘Trollz’ is one of the few #1 singles with almost no radio support in Hot 100 history (less than 2M radio audience), compared to #1 singles with over 100M in radio audience.

It is clear that over the past couple of years, US radio stations have taken Nicki Minaj’s chart success into their own hands and decided to completely exclude her from song rotations, in order to damage her reputation on not only the Hot 100, but in Hip Hop.

*data collected from Chartmetric*

RADIO PLAY

no. of album spins (from 30th June - 27th July 2020) in the United States for 2018 albums:

Queen - 56 album spins
Scorpion - 4,044 album spins
Astroworld - 1,910 album spins
IOP - 1,338 album spins

Compare Queen to the rest.

*data collected from Chartmetric*

RADIO PLAY

Track spins in the US (from 30th June - 27th July 2020) for popular 2018 songs:

FEFE - 8 spins
In My Feelings - 842 spins
Lucid Dreams - 1,180 spins
Sicko Mode - 1,625 spins
Girls Like You - 3,044 spins

Compare the numbers.

PLAYLISTING: After the release of her 4th album, Nicki Minaj expressed her disappointment with Spotify after the platform refused to promote her album in order to ‘teach [her] a lesson’ for playing her music 10 mins early on Apple Music, and accuses Spotify of bias.

Spotify is very impactful when it comes to song success and charting on the Hot 100, since it is one of the most used streaming services. Its most popular and most impactful playlist is ‘Today’s Top Hits’ with ~30M followers. There are articles written about its hit-making power.

FACT: the last time Spotify added a solo Nicki Minaj release to their most impactful playlist was in 2018, with Chun Li. Infact, Chun Li wasn’t added to the playlist until several days afterwards.

Ganja Burn, Barbie Dreams, Megatron and Yikes were not supported by the playlist

Queen’s playlist reach in July vs. the July playlist reach for other 2018 albums

9.2M for Queen? Then 40M+ for other albums?

Bare in mind that Nicki Minaj is one of Spotify’s most popular and most streamed artists of ALL TIME

Disrespecting Nicki Minaj isn’t a new thing for the music industry.
Just last year, BET tweeted and posted disgusting articles about Minaj ‘being dragged by her lacefront’ because of Cardi’s Grammy win. This came after years of Minaj performing at BET shows and showing love.

MANAGEMENT SABOTAGE: Nicki Minaj has hinted several times at being sabotaged by her team. While with them, she had full music videos and songs leak and overall had a horrible album rollout. She cut ties with them after they set her up several times.

She ended up hinting on her feature‘Nice To Meet Ya’ that a couple of members in her team may have been working against her

which would explain the constant leaks, the constant drama and extremely messy rollout

She ended up hinting on her feature‘Nice To Meet Ya’ that a couple of members in her team may have been working against herwhich would explain the constant leaks, the constant drama and extremely messy rollout

The music industry loves to push the narrative that Nicki Minaj was this ‘bitter old hag’ who didn’t want to share success with the other girls when that was never the case! The blogs won’t show you this side tho!!

Remember what I said about Atlantic paying female rappers to diss Nicki Minaj for no reason? Let’s talk about how 8 days before Shether, Remy showed no hate to Nicki. Well if there was no hatred before the diss track, it’s clear she was paid to do it. https://twitter.com/onikasthereason/status/1263795285270151169?s=21

https://twitter.com/onikasthereason/status/1263795285270151169?s=21

Now let’s talk about how Billboard had no issue with bundles until Nicki Minaj got a #1 singles with the benefit of bundles. Let’s talk about that! Let’s talk about how they were fine with bundles all these years but now it’s an issue cause this black woman is benefiting from it

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