Nicki Minaj’s Megan Thee Stallion diss track is mean-spirited and not very good

Friends, the situation has devolved. Rap beef is meant to be nasty; feuding stars frequently hit below the belt. (See: “The Story Of Adidon.”) If the song is truly great, it can transcend diss track status. If the song is bad, it comes across as an utter embarrassment. Such is the case for Nicki Minaj’s response to Megan Thee Stallion’s “Hiss.” Since the latter dropped a sly shout-out to “Megan’s Law” (a reference to Minaj’s husband, a registered sex offender), Minaj has posted a near-constant stream of vitriol on Twitter/X, culminating in her new song “Big Foot.”

Twitter is the key word here because the bars in “Big Foot” are mostly cobbled together from thoughts Minaj had already shared on the social media site. Minaj took umbrage at the suggestion “Big Foot” was a diss track (“Who tf said ‘diss track’?????? don’t play tonight. Fix your tweet,” she scolded Pop Base.) And yet she went on to threaten Megan with even more dissing before “Big Foot” even hit streaming: “After the 1st one drop, if dat pussy ass hoe so much as BREATHE wrong ima empty da clip,” she proclaimed. “If that pussy ass hoe deny 1THING I say, I’m posting every fkn receipt known to man. 5. Yes you heard me! Did 5 extra songs. we’ve been waiting on u HO.”

Five extra songs, all about Megan Thee Stallion? It seems like an outsized response given that Megan only mentioned Minaj’s business in passing, in the most roundabout way. But let’s start with the one track Minaj has released. The song taunts Megan for the many male rappers she’s alleged to have slept with, for being bad at rapping and for supposedly using ghostwriters, and for being the victim of a shooting at the hands of Tory Lanez. It’s ugly and mean-spirited, but that’s a hallmark of the genre. Separately, it’s simply not very good. Minaj became famous for her playful delivery, switching effortlessly between accents and alter egos, most notably the vicious and aggressive “Roman.” Here, the delivery sounds confused, at times slurred, incohesive and incoherent. And it concludes with a half-whispered rant that would be more at home on an early-morning Instagram livestream than on an officially released track.

As for the actual bars, none of it will be a surprise if you’ve followed Minaj’s activity on Twitter/X over the past few days. It also won’t be a surprise if you’ve listened to “THEE PERSON,” the diss track from Megan’s ex-boyfriend Pardison Fontaine that was released in November. Minaj appears to have lifted most of the accusations from “Big Foot” straight from Fontaine’s track: “Be for real, you ain’t even realistic/Got lipo then you started posting gym pics,” “Same n***a that you did all the tags for the beats/You let that n***a tag, let him beat,” “And you swore on your mother/I knew from then, I couldn’t trust her,” “Went on TV and then lied to Gayle King”—these are all lines from “THEE PERSON” that Minaj repurposes on “Big Foot” without adding a much more original spin. (“You was lyin’ to the Queen, then you went lyin’ to the King… Gayle,” the second time Minaj brings up the CBS News Anchor, is a low point among a handful of low points.)

Minaj’s impulse to defend her husband, even as the public is reminded that he is a convicted rapist is, in its own way, understandable. But perhaps even more so than defending her family, the “Hiss” diss seems to have opened the floodgates for Minaj’s professional jealousy and conspiratorial thinking. “They got you all them Grammys, but your flow’s still a no,” Minaj sneers on “Big Foot,” which only highlights that Megan Thee Stallion has three Grammys while Minaj has none. On Twitter, Minaj took shots at the fact that Megan claimed to be a self-funded independent artist despite being backed by Roc Nation. (Megan is signed to Jay-Z’s Roc Nation for management, not as her record label, according to Uproxx.) In one tweet, Minaj name-dropped Roc Nation CEO Desiree Perez specifically, proposing that the company was “willing to go broke to try to replace me.” In another, she suggested “They are doing so much fraudulent shit for #BIGFOOT she can’t do it w|o a machine behind her” while retweeting a fan post about how “Hiss” comes up when someone searches for “Big Foot” on Spotify. More likely, the algorithm connected both songs because users themselves were searching for both.

But Minaj is clearly convinced that the industry is against her, and Megan’s seems to view Megan’s success as a roadblock to her own. It’s a shame because having a rival hasn’t improved Minaj’s craft, at least in this case. We know she’s capable of greatness, but she’s not bringing her best game to this feud. The utter maliciousness of the track aside, “Big Foot” is a disappointment from one of the biggest names in hip hop.