Nicki Minaj’s new album ‘Queen’ went straight to number two in the Billboard chart in the US. She is not happy. It should have been number one, obviously. And the fact it isn’t is all clearly down to number one artist Travis Scott cheating and Spotify stiffing her. Or something.
Scott’s latest album, ‘Astroworld’, is at number one in the US for the second week running, having scored 205,000 album sales or equivalent, according to Billboard. Minaj, meanwhile, racked up 185,000 sales or equivalent. Both artists sold 78,000 actual copies of their albums last week.
Among various claims made by Minaj for missing out on the US number one, was that Scott had gamed the system in a number of ways. Not least by getting his girlfriend, Kylie Jenner, to post about his still-to-be-announced tour on Instagram.
“I put my blood, sweat and tears in writing a dope album only for Travis Scott to have Kylie Jenner post a tour pass telling people to come see her [and their baby] Stormi”, she wrote. “I’m actually laughing. ‘Queen’ broke the record of being number one in 86 countries. Thank Jesus and thank you to my fans”.
Minaj claimed that Scott promising pre-sale ticket access to tour dates when items are bought through his own store had unfairly boosted his album sales. Although she seems to believe, incorrectly, that the album is being given away with items in said store, and that’s how promising pre-sale tickets to the baby tour helped Scott achieve the sales he did. It may or may not be worth noting that t-shirts on Minaj’s store do come with a copy of her album.
Billboard’s figures show that it was actually streaming where Scott took the lead. But Minaj has an answer to this too. She claims that Spotify held her album back by twelve hours as a punishment for previewing tracks from it on her Beats 1 show on 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 ten minutes early on [Beats 1]”, she tweeted. “Even though they’ve been giving away my music for free for years and I am one of the top Spotify artists of all time … My music went up on Apple so I played it. I assumed it was on Spotify and Tidal at the same time. Spotify said that Apple tweeted fans advising ‘Queen’ was up and therefore they had to teach me a lesson”.
Spotify has not commented on the validity of this claim, although it is not the first time that artists have complained about being penalised by the service. Whatever, it turns out that Minaj’s lengthy rant about being denied the number one spot, and her repeated claims that she would let loose on the subject on her next Beats 1 show, was all a big joke.
After laying down her theory about how she’d been cheated out of her rightful chart position, she retweeted various fan messages of support. Then apparently friends and colleagues started calling her to see if she was alright, at which point she set them all straight.
“People are calling me thinking I’m huffing and puffing”, she tweeted a couple of hours later. “OMG y’all, this is sarcasm/dry humour. Yikes. I’m having the most iconNIC time. Come let me kiss you … When people call me and hear me crackin up laughing they seem so puzzled. Loosen up”.
Yeah, loosen up. Of course, other things that may have affected the success of ‘Queen’ include: her decision to work with controversial rapper 6ix9ine, homophobic lyrics on the album, and the continued debate over her alleged bullying of a critic. It still went to number two though. And also, the charts are basically meaningless these days.
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