Nicki Minaj cut a Kanye West collaboration from a recent show, seemingly calling the rapper a “clown”.
Minaj, 39, was performing in New Orleans on Friday (1 July) as part of the Essence Festival of Culture, when she told the crowd: “Hold on, hold on. I’m ‘Monster’-ed out – and we don’t f*** with clowns.”
She collaborated with West, 45, on the 2010 song “Monster” alongside Bon Iver and Rick Ross. It features on West’s record My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.
After making the comment, which drew laughs from the crowd, she swifly changed the subject by giving “a shout-out to New Orleans”.
Fans have pointed out that her remark came on the day that Cardi B released a new collaboration with West, who is now legally known as Ye. Minaj has had a public feud with Cardi B in the past.
Minaj was also set to collaborate with West again in 2019 for a song titled “New Body”, which was written for his record Jesus Is King.
At the time, Minaj told The Shade Room that the rappers weren’t “seeing eye to eye on” the finished product and, when the track list for Jesus Is King was released, the song was not a part of it.
In an interview with Hot 106 in February 2022, Minaj called the track “the biggest hit record that never came out”, and revealed the extent of her creative differences with West.
“So what I thought was interesting was that Kanye made me write my ‘New Body’ verse four times over in order to fit into where he was creatively and spiritually in his life, right, only then do I go on the internet a few months later to see him on Drink Champs, rolling a blunt and smoking or whatever he was doing,” she said.
“I missed it by a year, I guess. Had ‘New Body’ been out when he was not in his gospel era, then it would’ve seen the light of day. But, it didn’t, so it wasn’t meant to be. Everybody knows that was the hit that got away.”
