Everything Was Beautiful And Nothing Hurt: Nicki Minaj And Funkmaster Flex Argue On The Radio

So on Sunday night, Nicki Minaj canceled her performance at Hot 97’s Summer Jam, which is basically the premier hip-hop concert of the year, due to disparaging comments made about her music by Peter Rosenberg, one of hip-hop’s top angry, conservative flagbearers. Then, Lil Wayne, who runs Nicki’s Young Money label, decided that nobody on Young Money would perform, because he was pissed as all motherfucking get-out (YMCMB’s Tyga stayed behind to perform, probably because he is not on the Young Money group text message thread). Lil Wayne stood up for his artist, and Peter Rosenberg stood up for what he believes in. These are both okay, because all involved parties did what they thought was right.

However, this isn’t the type of thing where anyone involved in the situation can just let it go; if you’re involved in the music industry in any capacity, you’ve probably got an ego the size of a small planet, and Nicki Minaj has one of those celestial egos that seems to be compounded by the fact that she’s ridiculously sensitive—she deleted her Twitter one time because her album didn’t sell enough, and complained that her fans didn’t “appreciate her” enough when a fan site leaked her album. Wouldn’t you actually get psyched that your fans wanted to hear your music early? Whatever.

Anyway, Funkmaster Flex, the Hot 97 dude who provided the interstitial music at Summer Jam, started talking shit about Nicki during his set and said he was going to ruin her career. That dude’s got an ego on him too—his main “thing” as a DJ is to premiere new songs then insert a bunch of bomb sound effects on top of them. You don’t drop bombs all over a Jay-Z song unless you think you’re equally as important as Jay-Z, which—eight times out of nine times—you are not.

So last night, Nicki Minaj called into Funkmaster Flex’s show and they yelled at each other for a really long time. It was kind of wonderful in the sort of way that trainwrecks or watching two strangers beat the shit out of each other in a bar is wonderful, and I have five—and only five—thoughts on the matter.

1. There is no way either one of these people is one hundred precent in the right here. Nicki probably should have performed at Summer Jam, and Funk Flex probably should not have talked as much shit about her as she did. Performing at Summer Jam is an honor that you shouldn’t take lightly, because they can literally get anyone they want to play—Nicki was replaced at the last minute by Nas and Lauryn Hill, which is like replacing your top rocket scientist with two even better rocket scientists, and having them accidentally cure cancer in the process.

2. Nicki Minaj is VERY good at yelling. Like, way better than I had imagined she was going to be. I really wish Flex had taken the opportunity to drop some of his signature bombs on Nicki while she was yelling at him, but he didn’t. I can only assume he did this out of fear.

3. The statistical likelihood that someone was going to get killed over this was stratospherically high. Both Nicki and Flex know people who have guns, and they both seem fairly insecure, and insecure people tend to put hits out on each other.

4. When I tuned in, Nicki and Flex were arguing about whether or not Nicki’s selling well undermined her ability to be hardcore. Nicki’s argument was that she had sold so much that she could do whatever the fuck she wanted, and Flex’s point was that when somebody is in that stratosphere of success, they open themselves up to a different level of criticism. Nicki got away with using the word “fuck” at least twice in the interview, which is worth an FCC violation of several hundred thousand dollars. In college, I once played the song “I’m On One,” unedited, on the radio at 3am. I got away with that because nobody listened to my college radio station other than the other DJs. Several hundred thousand people, meanwhile, listen to Hot 97. There will be hell (or at least, like, $600,000) to pay, and maybe to Nicki, that’s enough.

5. Nicki and Flex’s argument eventually devolved into the type of arguments that my mom and I had a lot in high school, where Flex would ask her, “Are you mad at me?” and Nicki would just say, “I’m not mad. I’m just disappointed,” over and over again. By the way, Mom, I’m sorry you found my weed that one time. I really thought you’d buy my argument that it was just pencil shavings, but, then again, I probably should have realized you lived through the 70s.

At the argument’s (it feels weird to call it an “interview,” since it was done in the radio equivalent of all caps) conclusion, Nicki offered to play a free concert in New York, which is probably ultimately an untrue thing, because there are permits and shit involved in that, and Nicki Minaj is not a lawyer.

Anyway, you can listen to the full audio of the interview over at Sohh.com, which is one of those websites that will probably give your computer cancer.

@drewmillard