Despite her best efforts, Nicki Minaj’s latest album, Queen, failed to supplant Travis Scott’s Astroworld as the No. 1 album in the country. Now, she’s blaming her second place finish on an unfair marketing campaign carried out by Scott, as well as a lack of promotional support from Spotify.
It’s worth noting that Minaj herself made the controversial move of retroactively adding her 6ix9ine collaboration, “FEFE”, to the album in an effort to propel it to No. 1. However, in a series of tweets posted Sunday, she said the real crime was Scott’s “season pass” bundles for his upcoming Astroworld tour, which included a copy of his album.
“Travis sold over 50K of these. With no requirement of redeeming the album! With no dates for a tour, etc,” Minaj tweeted. “I spoke to him. He knows he doesn’t have the #1 album this week.”
“I put my blood sweat & tears in writing a dope album only for Travis Scott to have [his girlfriend] Kylie Jenner post a tour pass telling ppl to come see her & [their daughter] Stormi,” Minaj added.
Minaj also took issue with Spotify, which she said failed to promote her album due to her relationship with Apple Music. “Spotify put Drake’s face on every playlist but told me they’d have to teach me a lesson for playing my music 10 mins early on #QueenRadio,” she wrote. “Even tho they’ve been giving away my music for free for years & I am one of the top Spotify artists of all time.”
“Spotify had to teach me a lesson but rewarded the man who has had an Apple radio show the longest; inadvertently helping the Apple platform the most. Oh I can’t wait for #QueenRadio on Tuesday. They took away my promotion they had promised for the 1st cpl days b/c of this.”
Update – August 20th: In a statement, a Spotify rep said the company “supported Nicki Minaj with a Times Square billboard, a host of the largest playlists, New Music Friday and the new music release shelf. Her song ‘Bed’ actually saw an increase based on the promotions put behind the campaign. The company continues to be big fans of Nicki.
Read Minaj’s full tweet storm below, and listen to our review of Queen here.