While promoting her new album, Short N’ Sweet, pop star Sabrina Carpenter tweeted, “This one is for Nicki,” prompting “Barbie World” rapper Nicki Minaj to acknowledge the “Espresso” singer during a livestream. Fans quickly deduced that Carpenter was out for revenge on Nicki’s behalf, involving herself in a long-running rivalry between the Queens rapper and Travis Scott. Here’s a refresher on why Nicki Minaj has beef with Travis Scott, and just how Carpenter fits in.
You may remember that Minaj pitched quite a fit in 2018 after Scott’s album Astroworld returned to the No. 1 spot in its second week, relegating Minaj’s new album Queen to a No. 2 debut after Nicki campaigned heavily for the top spot. Her main grievance was that many of Astroworld‘s second-week sales came from merch bundles the Houston rapper pitched on his website, which Nicki felt was unfair, as fans were really buying the merch, not the album, but Travis got the sales anyway.
“I put my blood sweat & tears in writing a dope album only for Travis Scott to have Kylie Jenner post a tour pass telling people to come see her and Stormi,” she wrote on Twitter, before restating her case on Queen Radio. She argued that Billboard should change its counting rules — and it did, eventually — but she was unhappy at the possibility that her project might be seen as a relative failure based on the bar of going No. 1 in its first week (which, technically, she set herself, but we’ll leave that alone for a moment).
Which brings us to today, and Sabrina Carpenter. Clearly, Carpenter counts herself one of Minaj’s loyal Barbz (hopefully, not the toxic kind that bullied journalists and other artists on her behalf). With Short N’ Sweet released on the same day as the re-release to streaming of Scott’s breakout mixtape Days Before Rodeo, it looks like Sabrina sees this as a chance to get justice for Ms. Minaj, if her album can top the Billboard 200 over Scott’s — especially as Scott appears to be up to his old shenanigans. Frankly, everybody here seems way too obsessed with the numbers game, especially as they’re probably not even all competing for the same limited group of fans. Maybe they’d all be better served joining adult sports leagues, so they can get their winning fix somewhere more productive. What I’m saying here is: Bring back Rock N’ Jock. For the culture.