Last week’s meteor shower must be having some residual effects, because we’ve just been blessed with some supernatural good fortune. Nicki Minaj and Cardi B released a collab this morning. Yes, it’s technically a Migos track in which the two divas feature, but of course they steal the show. “Motor Sport” is a refutation for everyone who spent summer 2017 looking for signs of a feud between Cardi and Nicki. The Generous Queen and The Trap Selena show us that, of course, it’s possible for women in the same field to get along, combating a culture that has long loved to pit women against each other. As Cardi bellows in the song, “Why would I hop in some beef when I could just hop in a Porsche?”
Nicki has consistently had to endure having her words misinterpreted as digs at other female rappers. Just this month, she had to clarify that she was not taking complete credit for making female rap “mainstream” after her statements during an XXL interview were misconstrued. “Imagine me saying I made female rappers mainstream when there were so many women who already had platinum albums under their belts,” Nicki wrote on Instagram. “Lauryn sold 10 million off one album, Eve had platinum singles w/Alicia, Gwen Stefani, her own tv show & clothing line… When I came out, there had been a drought of a few years where NO female rap album had gone platinum, females weren’t getting budgets, the industry did NOT believe in the female rapper anymore… So I ‘REINTRODUCED’ the ‘successful’ female rapper back to POP CULTURE.” Imagine an influential male rapper like Jay-Z or Kanye West being forced to credit another male rapper’s successes.
Meanwhile, Cardi is showing the world that “Bodak Yellow” was not a one-off hit. She recently teamed up with A$AP Rocky and G-Eazy on the club anthem “No Limit” and Kehlani has expressed a strong interest in producing a “project” with the Bronx rapper.
Hopefully, this new collab will put an end to the Cardi vs. Nicki speculations and prove that healthy competition and camaraderie do not have to be mutually exclusive. It probably won’t. But at least we got this fire line from Nicki: “Bitch you my son, go sit on a potty.”
Check out “Motor Sport” below: