Azealia Banks weighs in on Megan Thee Stallion and Nicki Minaj feud: “This is about Jay-Z”

5 February, 2024

(Form left to right) Azealia Banks, Nicki Minaj and Megan Thee Stallion. Photo credit: Tim Mosenfelder/Getty Images; James Devaney/GC Images; Arturo Holmes/Getty Images

Azealia Banks has shared her thoughts on the ongoing supposed Megan Thee Stallion and Nicki Minaj feud, arguing that it “is about Jay-Z.”

Over the past weeks, fans have speculated that Minaj and Thee Stallion have been sending shots at one another in their most recent songs, as part of what is being seen as a long, ongoing feud between the pair.

Last, Banks weighed into the discussion with a 20-minute-long rant about the feud posted to her Instagram story.

“Originally, I was just going to stay out of this because it’s another day, another rap beef — who really cares?” she began. “But I think there’s some interesting parts to this that everyone’s missing. This isn’t about Meg [collaborating] with Cardi [B], this is about Jay-Z.

“Jay-Z has this way of presenting himself in the culture as a Daddy Warbucks type of figure.”

Back in 2019, Megan Thee Stallion signed with Jay-Z’s Roc Nation management label. Banks said that she believes Minaj has always wanted a co-sign from Jay-Z and was upset that HOV took the Houston star under his wing.

“When you really dig down deep into it, Nicki be sweating Jay in a different type of way,” the Harlem native continued. “Low-key, she be on his dick. I’m really good at reading body language and I could see in the ‘Feeling Myself’ video [that] Beyoncé’s kinda like laughing at her.”

She continued: “Jay-Z has kinda positioned himself in this way where almost every type of female urban artist feels she needs his approval of sorts. I could just low-key feel she’s felt slighted by Jay. Just by his association with Meek Mill. But at the same time, Nicki wants to wiggle her way in bad. That’s what this beef is about. She wants to be a Roc Nation girl so fucking bad.”

Banks concluded: “It’s been years since Jay-Z publicly co-signed any female rapper, and the fact that it’s Megan — it could be anyone — the fact some female rapper that’s not Nicki got Jay-Z’s public co-sign makes Nicki jealous.”

The ‘Luxury’ rapper has commented before on Minaj’s dominance of the music industry,  and how label executives have been trying to take away her monopoly on female rap.

In an interview from June 2019 recirculating on social media, Banks said in an interview: “Nicki Minaj, for a very long time, has had the like complete market share of the female rap.

“These other music industry execs have been trying to push their female rap products through. Nicki Minaj was just not letting these other corporate white guys get a piece of her fucking pie, so they made Cardi B and launched her on Nicki.”

On Thursday (February 1), Banks reiterated this viewpoint, saying: “[Nicki] feels vulnerable, really vulnerable… because she is valuable and she’s just been kind of left in the wild. All of these white music execs are staging [scenarios] and are fucking eating her piece of the pie.”

She added: “I’ve said this time and time again: bitch, stop fucking fighting with these girls because it’s not about these girls. It’s about the white men behind them that want to eat your food.”

It’s unclear when Minaj and Thee Stallion started their conflict. They previously collaborated on the popular 2019 song with Ty Dolla $ign ‘Hot Girl Summer’. 

However, in Megan’s latest single, ‘Hiss‘, she rapped: “These hoes don’t be mad at Megan, these hoes mad at Megan’s Law”. This refers to the mandatory requirement for US authorities to disclose information about sex offenders to the public, with Minaj’s husband Kenneth Petty a registered sex offender after pleading guilty to attempted rape age 16. 

In return, Minaj dropped ‘Big Foot’, rapping: “This little beggin’ whore talkin’ ’bout Megan’s law / For a free beat, you can hit Megan raw / If you a ghostwriter, Pardi in Megan jaw / Shots thrown but I still ain’t let Megan score.”

The name of the song alluded to the 2020 incident where Tory Lanez shot Thee Stallion’s foot. He was found guilty in 2022 and sentenced to ten years in prison.

Minaj has since said Thee Stallion “milked” her shooting and is relying on “sympathy” to stay relevant, comparing the rapper to Rihanna when she had to publicly deal with Chris Brown being charged for assaulting her in 2009.

In other news, Megan Thee Stallion has announced that she will release her third studio album – and that it will be self-funded and independently released via her label, Hot Girl Productions. She will support the record by embarking on the ‘Hot Girl Summer’ world tour later this year.

‘Big Foot’ comes after Minaj released ‘Pink Friday 2’ in December, which NME said “lives up to the hype” and “feels like a consolidation and refinement of everything Minaj can do” in a four-star review.

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