The rollout process for Nicki Minaj’s fourth album Queen has been quite a rollercoaster, and now it seems she’s hit another bump in the road. Nicki was set to embark on her NickiHndrxx tour alongside Future next month, but last night she announced that the North American leg will be pushed back to 2019. Due to “scheduling conflicts,” Future will no longer appear on the rescheduled dates.
“Nicki Minaj will be announcing new North American dates to kick off in May 2019. Refunds for the previously scheduled North American dates will be available at point of purchase, with new Nicki Minaj on-sale details announced soon,” a Live Nation press release stated. The European leg, which still features both artists, is set to go on as planned next February.
Nicki shared a video on Twitter that chalked the delay up to rehearsal issues. “This is all happening because I pushed my album back two months,” she said. “I just finished writing and recording literally hours before the album came out. So now I just simply don’t have the time to rehearse and be on the road to give you guys the level of the show I need to give.” Queen was originally supposed to drop in June, but was ultimately pushed back to mid-August.
Page Six, however, tells a different story. The gossip outlet cited an unnamed source at Live Nation in a new report about struggles with ticket sales. “Nicki’s tour could be the most disappointing ticket sales of the year for any artist,” the source said. “These are big arenas with up to 20,000 capacities. Sales for opening night in Baltimore is 2,000 tickets. LA is 3,400, New Orleans 1,000, Denver 1,300, Chicago 3,900. Even her hometown Brooklyn is only 5,050.” The report also claims she is "spiraling out of control,” although it only attributes that quote to “top music-industry insiders.”
The news comes less than 24 hours after Nicki leveled some harsh criticism at Travis Scott, whose ASTROWORLD album spent a second week at No. 1 over Queen. In a Queen Radio broadcast, Nicki referred to him as “Hoe Nigga of the Week” and claimed he used merch bundles to manipulate sales figures. “What we not gonna do is have this Auto-Tuned man sell sweaters and tell y'all he sold half-a-million albums, because he didn’t,” she said.
While it’s unknown if this had anything to do with the tour changes, it is worth noting that Future and Travis have previously worked together on songs like “3500” and “High Fashion.” The Atlanta rapper released his mixtape BEASTMODE 2 back in July and is hard at work on his next album. A copy of the album was expected to be bundled with tour tickets, prompting speculation that he would drop the project before his tour began. His departure from the North American tour muddies that timeline.
Read Page Six’s full report here and catch up on all the lyrics to Nicki Minaj’s Queen on Genius now.
