S. Samuel
Grammy-winning rapper T.I. has shared his opinion of female hip-hop phenom Nicki Minaj and refused to referee her past dispute with Brooklyn rap veteran Lil Kim.
Based on an unreleased excerpt from Tip’s new VIBE cover story, he admits Minaj is a fierce competitor.
Next “Lil Kim Nicki Minaj Beef” is sent through the search engine, followed by a quick briefing on last Spring’s claw-stretched feud between the Queen Bee and hip-hop’s reigning Queen. Tip is the least interested in lending this any bandwidth. “It’s hard for me to take rap beef seriously,” he says dismissively. “But I will say that Nicki’s on fire now. She’s a monster, literally.” (VIBE)
Recently, SOHH asked Dipset’s Freekey Zekey why there is no female Diplomat to sharpen up the lady rap game competition.
“It’s not hard to work with women because if you got control of what’s going on, then you can take them to any plateau,” Zekey told SOHH. “There’s a lot of females and they get too hyped and too happy and want to jump into things. So when you finally get a female — she has 672 new managers, her boyfriend needs to be on every trip, she’s got 800 stylists ’cause her aunt who used to do hair in the projects, she [can] do her hair a little better and she’s got her and her baby daddy’s sister. Nah. You know what I’m saying? There’s a lot of things that go with that. Actually, we haven’t come across one, not saying we’re out there with the binoculars looking to find [a female star], snatch her up and mold her.” (SOHH)
In May 2010, Def Jam’s Senior VP of A&R Sha Money XL told SOHH how much pressure Minaj has placed on other female rappers.
“Nicki Minaj has set the bar so high that whoever the new female rappers is, and I’ve heard one or two females so far, they’re horrible. I’m real hard on female rappers, seriously. I ain’t with the bullsh*t, don’t come too hard, you gotta be sexy and look like Nicki Minaj and sh*t. She got it. I don’t know about that Sean Garrett record, but she’s got it. That record ain’t it, she’s supposed to come harder than that. That sh*t ain’t it.” (SOHH Guest Star)
Earlier this year, Lil Kim blamed Minaj’s swagger jacking for sparking their back-and-forth beef.
“This is the thing: It’s just, it’s really, like, at the end of the day, I do what I have to do, and I’m gonna keep doing what I have to do,” Kim said in an interview. “I’m gonna do me. They’re the ones that brought this about. It could have been that simple. But what they did was underestimate me. They thought I was gonna sit back and let them do what they were doing. I’m gonna let everybody know: I’m on my Hollywood sophisticated, but I’ll bring it back if I have to. And that’s in life. I can’t help it. I’m G’d up from my feet up. If I have to handle my business, I’mma handle my business. And I have to fight for my fans.” (MTV)
Check out a recent T.I. interview below:
