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Nicki Minaj and Funkmaster Flex Argued on the Radio

They yelled at each other for a really long time. It was kind of wonderful, like watching two strangers beat the shit out of each other.

So on Sunday night, Nicki Minaj canceled her performance at Hot 97’s Summer Jam, which is basically the premier hip-hop concert of the year, due to disparaging comments made about her music by Peter Rosenberg, one of hip-hop’s top angry, conservative flagbearers. Then, Lil Wayne, who runs Nicki’s Young Money label, decided that nobody on Young Money would perform, because he was pissed as all motherfucking get-out (YMCMB’s Tyga stayed behind to perform, probably because he is not on the Young Money group text message thread). Lil Wayne stood up for his artist, and Peter Rosenberg stood up for what he believes in. These are both okay, because all involved parties did what they thought was right.

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However, this isn’t the type of thing where anyone involved in the situation can just let it go; if you’re involved in the music industry in any capacity, you’ve probably got an ego the size of a small planet, and Nicki Minaj has one of those celestial egos that seems to be compounded by the fact that she’s ridiculously sensitive—she deleted her Twitter one time because her album didn’t sell enough, and complained that her fans didn’t “appreciate her” when a fan site leaked her album. Wouldn’t you actually get psyched that your fans wanted to hear your music early? Whatever.

Anyway, Funkmaster Flex, the Hot 97 dude who provided the interstitial music at Summer Jam, started talking shit about Nicki during his set and said he was going to ruin her career. That dude’s got an ego on him too—his main “thing” as a DJ is to premiere new songs then insert a bunch of bomb sound effects on top of them. You don’t drop bombs all over a Jay-Z song unless you think you’re equally as important as Jay-Z, which—eight times out of nine times—you are not.

So Monday night, Nicki Minaj called into Funkmaster Flex’s show and they yelled at each other for a really long time. It was kind of wonderful in the sort of way that trainwrecks or watching two strangers beat the shit out of each other in a bar is wonderful, and I have five—and only five—thoughts on the matter.

1.     There is no way either one of these people is one hundred precent in the right here. Nicki probably should have performed at Summer Jam, and Funk Flex probably should not have talked as much shit about her as he did. Performing at Summer Jam is an honor that you shouldn’t take lightly, because they can literally get anyone they want to play—Nicki was replaced at the last minute by Nas and Lauryn Hill, which is like replacing your top rocket scientist with two even better rocket scientists, and having them accidentally cure cancer in the process.

To read the rest of Drew's thoughts on the Summer Jam debacle visit Noisey.VICE.com