I don’t think Nicki Minaj or Cardi B wanted to be sharing headlines this week. In a week that should be monumental for them both, individually, Nicki Minaj and Cardi B are entangled in a predictable but still frustrating storyline. It’s the easy narrative: the lone chart-topping women in a genre dominated by men released new music in the same 7-day span (like men do all the time) so they must hate each other and want to see each other fail.

As a fan of both Nicki Minaj and Cardi B, I’m exhausted and I’m pissed off by the Cardi vs. Nicki conversation. I would love to just write about the quality of Nicki’s two new singles without having to dissect what it says about the music industry that no one can let two female rappers be great at the same time but it’s more nuanced than that. Cardi B and Nicki Minaj are tied together in a way that is distressing to me but at this point, it’s unavoidable. Yesterday was dubbed #NickiDay to celebrate her new music but, as you know, many of us had already pegged this week as Cardi Week. I knew this sh-t was coming.

When I reviewedInvasion of Privacy,Nicki’s name没有提及过，但是妮琪·米娜放下单身人士后，没有得到同样的礼貌Chun-Li和Barbie Tingzbecause in the interview she gaveZane Lowe关于歌曲，她被要求与她的传闻牛肉一起讲话Cardi B。尼基的情感反应现在使今天无法写下她与卡迪的关系，而牛什-T的厌恶症本质上与接受他们的关系的接待联系在一起。

Nicki和Cardi都否认彼此争执。这是一个comprehensive breakdown的时候,人们认为他们是蜜蜂fing. Each of these times, Nicki and Cardi both denied that there was any issue between them. They even appeared on the song赛车运动在一起，但是那首歌创造了更多的戏剧性。有报道说，尼基·米娜（Nicki Minaj赛车运动after Cardi was included on the song. According to Nicki, her issues with Cardi B all go back to that verse.

“当我第一次参加比赛时，如果我的身材的女性与我一起做了一项功能，我只会唱歌他们的赞美，并说谢谢……第一次采访[Cardi]在Motorsport出来之后进行，it just really hurt me, because she looked so aggravated and angry, and the only thing she kept saying was, 'I didn't hear that, she changed her verse.’

Nicki also said she didn’t appear in the video for赛车运动与Cardi一起是由于真正的安排冲突，而不是因为血液不好。尼基继续说，她是个“伤害”，因为Cardi B和Migos并没有给予她应得的尊重。

“They all knew that and still did interviews and jumped around it just to paint Nicki as the bad person so you could play the victim. That really, really, really hurt me because I really supported her… Up until this recent interview that she did, I had never seen her show me genuine love. I could just imagine how many girls wish they could have been on a song with Nicki Minaj. I'm not saying in it a cocky way ... It's because of the Nicki hate train that she felt like she could speak about me in that manner."

This is the point in the interview where Nicki seems to get choked up. This is the point in the interview where I got even more frustrated. The confusion over MotorSport seems like a pretty standard disagreement between colleagues. Also, this:

#BlameQuavo.

I’m not mad that Nicki wanted Cardi to put some respect on her name (although if I remember correctly Lil Kim accused Nicki of the same thing when she was on the come-up.) What’s frustrating is that all of this just adds to the narrative that Cardi B and Nicki Minaj can’t exist in the same space and get along – or that their individual successes are in any way a detriment to each other. They’re not. In fact, Cardi and Nicki succeeding at the same time isgood for business。

Healthy competition is not the same as a feud. The one-upping that goes on between Drake and Kendrick Lamar is not handled in the same way that Cardi and Nicki’s issues are. IF they are competing because they are both ambitious women who want to be the best and IF they do trade a few lyrical jabs at each other, that should be OK. Competition is not a bad thing. Ambition is not a dirty word. Rivalries and beefs are ingrained into hip-hop. But also ingrained in this genre, which is so unforgiving to women and dominated by men, is the perpetuation of the tired stereotype of cat-fighting females. I think Nicki is so fed up of this narrative too that she got emotional talking about it.

几天前，我与我的朋友，地球和邮件专栏作家Denise Balkissoon共进晚餐，我们谈到了Cardi，Nicki以及感觉像黑人女性在公开场合不同意的挫败感。（她本周还写了一篇很棒的文章，讲述了女性在说唱中的统治以及仍然存在于highest levels。) Denise and I talk about this often. As soon as black women start to disagree, we’re pitted against each other. The strength of each of our arguments seem to weaken. If Cardi B and Nicki Minaj are fighting with each other, can they still fight the patriarchal standards in hip-hop that they’re both facing? Or will they be written off as feuding angry black women? Can they still get what they both deserve? The answer should be yes, of course, f-ck yes.

在过去的一周中，Cardi B和Nicki Minaj不得不回答有关彼此的问题，而Field Bullsh-T，疲倦的比喻分散了我们所有人都应该关注的注意力：音乐。至于尼基的新单曲，我喜欢Chun-Li(even though it’s full of sloppy street fighter references) better thanBarbie Tingzbut I like them both enough that I’m excited for her album. Nicki Minaj has yet to deliver a full cohesive, classic album. She definitely has it in her. I hope it’s finally time. And that it’s also finally time for two women to release rap’s best albums of 2018.

You can listen toBarbie Tingzhere和Chun-Lihere。

Attached - Nicki at the Lakers game in LA the other day.