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.

Taylor Swift

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It all started with a tweet. Swift and Minaj had a heated exchange on the social media site after the rapper spoke out about her lack of a nomination for video of the year at the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards, seemingly referencing Swift’s nomination.

Swift, who was the only female to receive a nomination in that category, responded to Minaj’s tweet, accusing the star of pitting “women against each other.”

Minaj noted that she made no mention of the “Style” singer, and Swift soon called a truce in a follow-up post, writing, “If I win, please come up with me!!” (Swift ended up taking home the award.)

The “Blank Space” singer later tweeted an apology to the rap star, writing that she “missed the point” of Minaj’s tweets.

The two seemed to put all the “Bad Blood” behind them when Swift joined Minaj on the VMA stage in a show-stopping performance.

It appeared the feud might spark again in 2017 after Minaj appeared as a featured guest on one-time Swift frenemy Katy Perry’s single “Swish Swish.” Later that summer, Minaj mysteriously tweeted “N—– sit down. Be humble,” the day that Swift released her single “Look What You Made Me Do.” However, though fans of both artists thought it was a reference to Swift, the comment did not amount to anything.

Any semblance of a feud was long over by October 2022, when Minaj congratulated Swift on Twitter for breaking Spotify’s record for most-streamed album in a single day after the release of Swift’s album Midnights.

Miley Cyrus

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Proving that she is not one to back down, Minaj confronted Cyrus at the 2015 VMAs (Cyrus hosted the award show) after the “Wrecking Ball” singer called her “not too kind” while commenting on the Minaj-Swift exchange in an interview with The New York Times.

“Now, back to this bitch that had a lot to say about me the other day in the press,” Minaj said after taking to the stage to receive the award for best hip-hop video. “Miley, what’s good?” (a source later claimed that Minaj was joking).

Cyrus quickly tried to defend herself, telling Minaj, “We all do interviews. And we all know how they manipulate.”

Minaj addressed the still-unresolved feud in her cover story for the New York Times Magazine’s Culture issue that October.

“You’re in videos with black men, and you’re bringing out black women on your stages, but you don’t want to know how black women feel about something that’s so important?” Minaj said of Cyrus.

Years later, Cyrus released the song “Cattitude” in May 2019, which features the lyric, “I love you Nicki, but I listen to Cardi,” a clear reference to the Minaj-Cardi feud.

Minaj responded to Cyrus’ diss by saying, “A Perdue chicken can never talk s— about queens,” Minaj said in response to a question about Cyrus. “But I do notice a lot of Perdue chickens recently have been trying to say the queen’s name for clout. And that’s always been happening.”

The rapper added: “That’s what [Cyrus] did in the first place. And then the white girl cried and made the Black girl seem like she was a bad guy. In the first place, she disrespected me in a magazine article for no reason.”

Mariah Carey

Dennis Leupold

Mariah Carey and Minaj first worked together when Minaj appeared on Carey’s 2009 song “Up Out My Face” in 2009, but the camaraderie wouldn’t last.

During her stint as a judge on American Idol in 2013, Minaj warred with fellow panelist Carey — an Idol source told PEOPLE that Carey didn’t think Minaj could sing and “doesn’t think she should be judging folks.”

“Mariah has been saying little things to jab at Nicki from day one of shooting,” the source said.

Although other insiders said Carey did not provoke Minaj, a profanity-laced outburst (caught on video and posted by TMZ) suggested that Minaj was fed up.

The once-cordial stars, who never patched things up publicly, announced their departures from the show on the same day in 2013.

Farrah Abraham

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In 2016, Minaj went head-to-head with MTV’s 16 and Pregnant star Farrah Abraham in an NSFW Twitter feud after the “Superbass” rapper criticized the reality TV star’s relationship with her mother on Teen Mom OG.

“Farrah is a c— to her mother,” Minaj tweeted while apparently watching an episode of the MTV show.

Abraham hit back at the rapper, writing, “Cause your [sic] a parent right? Your [sic] videos look like porn Horrible good luck being negative #Godbless busy making TV.”

The spat continued, with Minaj urging Abraham to treat her mother better: “Be happy she’s helping!” Minaj tweeted

Although Minaj seemed to wash her hands of the feud, a Twitter video surfaced in the days following the feud of Abraham’s daughter Sophia calling Minaj a “total loser.”

Lil’ Kim

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The Queen of the Barbs was at odds with the Queen Bee early in her career: In May 2012, Lil’ Kim told the New York radio show The Breakfast Club 105.1 that the rapper stole her sound and her style.

The feud made headlines when Minaj dissed Kim in tracks on her Pink Friday album, and Kim responded with diss tracks on a mixtape pointedly titled Black Friday.

Things died down for some time but were reignited in 2013 when Kim dissed Minaj again in her own remix to Beyoncé’s Minaj-assisted “Flawless” remix.

Nearly a decade later, Kim faced accusations in September 2022 that her rap on a Megan Thee Stallion remix of the song “Plan B” was a dig at Nicki Minaj and her son. However, Kim quickly took to her Instagram Story to clear things up. “I never said a word about anyone’s child…please feel free to listen to the song where we were clearly talking about an EX,” she wrote. “To try and twist my words to have an excuse to take digs at my child is disgusting. I’m one of the most disrespected legends in the game but what you will not do is come for MY CHILD.”

Demi Lovato

Demi Lovato sent a jab the rapper’s way after Minaj failed to mention her in an Instagram photo from the 2016 Met Gala.

“When you aren’t mentioned in a post but didn’t do s— to the person,” Lovato wrote on a Snapchat photo, according to E! Online. (Both Lovato and Minaj were dressed in Moschino by Jeremy Scott for the event.)

Lovato took to Instagram, uploading a since-deleted photo of Minaj seemingly sending her a sharp look on the red carpet.

“This pretty much summed up my first and probably last Met,” Lovato captioned the picture. “I’m obviously laughing at the fact that 1. I look incredibly awkward and 2. That the shade being thrown in this picture actually gives me life.”

Minaj didn’t comment on Lovato’s statements.

Days later, Lovato slammed critics in a late-night Twitter rant. “Sometimes there’s more to the story” she began. “Sometimes there’s more s— going on than you see,” she continued. “Maybe you DON’T know every aspect of my life so maybe you shouldn’t assume you know.”

In March 2018, Lovato revealed she left the fashion gala early to attend an AA meeting.

“I had a terrible experience,” Lovato told Billboard. “This one celebrity was a complete bitch and was miserable to be around. It was very cliquey. I remember being so uncomfortable that I wanted to drink.”

Many fans online believed Lovato left because of Minaj.

“I changed my clothes, but I still had my diamonds on — millions of dollars of diamonds on in an AA meeting,” Lovato said. “And I related more to the homeless people in that meeting who struggled with the same struggles that I deal with than the people at the Met Gala — fake and sucking the fashion industry’s d—.”

Iggy Azalea

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At the 2014 BET Awards, best female hip-hop artist winner Minaj appeared to diss Iggy Azalea in her acceptance speech.

“What I want the world to know about Nicki Minaj is when you hear Nicki Minaj spit, Nicki Minaj wrote it,” Minaj said, seemingly insinuating that the “Fancy” rapper had used a ghostwriter.

Minaj didn’t deny slamming Azalea but later took to Twitter to elaborate on her speech.

“The media puts words in my mouth all the time and this is no different. I will always take a stance on women writing b/c I believe in us!” Minaj tweeted. “I’ve congratulated Iggy on the success of Fancy, publicly. She should be very proud of that.”

Soon after, Azalea responded to the drama online:

“If I had won the BET award that would’ve been great but it wasn’t my year & I don’t mind — so you shouldn’t either,” she wrote on Instagram at the time. “Generally speaking I’m unbothered by anything that ‘happened’ at the BET awards and just feel worn out by everyone trying to make me have wars with people all the time.”

Meek Mill

Rappers Meek Mill and Minaj were in a relationship for nearly two years before Minaj announced they had broken up in January 2017.

Since the break-up, the two have occasionally dissed each other. When asked about Minaj on Twitter in December 2018, Mill said that she had blocked him.

Minaj included the line “Meek still be in my DMs, I be having to duck him” in her 2018 single “Barbie Dreams.” After performing it at the FOMO Festival in Brisbane, Australia, in January 2019, she told the crowd, “I could tell you secrets but I won’t, ’cause being a bitter bitch is what I don’t.”

The following year, the former couple got into a public spat when they ran into one another at a clothing store in West Hollywood. The screaming match was captured on video and obtained by TMZ. The situation led to a Twitter argument in which Minaj accused Mill of being physically abusive toward both her and his own sister.