During her appearance on The Joe Budden Podcast this week, Nicki Minaj called out Rick Ross for lyrics about her on his 2017 song “Apple of My Eye.” Ross appeared on The Breakfast Club this morning, where he offered a vague response to her that seemed to insinuate she played a role in the beef between her ex-boyfriend Meek Mill and her labelmate Drake
“I mean if somebody went to meet Obama with you she is a keeper until you find out otherwise,” he said about Nicki’s claim that Ross supported her relationship with Meek following a White House meeting with the former president. “Me personally, she was around me a few times, but other than that she was a huge talent, but she was playing a very important position at the time. She was between Meek and Drake at the time.”
On The Joe Budden Podcast, Nicki spoke about being one of the only artists to support Meek during his Drake beef. Ross, however, speculated that she might have been an instigator:
What she don’t know and what she may not understand coming from a big homie like myself, playing that position was a very fragile role. It would be very easy to put that responsibility on her. That ain’t what I tried to make it to, but most definitely when I seen it go the sour, it would be easy to assume she may have had something to do with that. And if somebody tell you they didn’t, they lying.
However, the Miami rapper doesn’t want to look backwards. “Everybody move forward,” he said. “She move forward, she doing her thing. I’m happy to see her do that. Meek doing his thing. Drizzy, they doing their thing. That’s all I wanted to see at the end of the day.”
Nicki previously called out Ross for his “Apple of My Eye” lyrics, where he told Meek not to trust Nicki. She claimed these lines were inappropriate because she supported Meek during the Drake beef:
When a grown-ass fucking man name-drops a woman and disses a woman to sell an album when I was the only person in your artist’s corner when everyone turned their back on them? When everyone was calling them Twitter fingers and cracking up laughing at them? And I’m the one?
On the track, Ross raps:
I told Meek, “I wouldn’t trust Nicki
Instead of beefin' with your dog, you just give ‘em some distance”
We all make mistakes, let’s not be too specific
We like, “I rather be a killer than be a statistic”
Last year, she spoke about the toll that Drake and Meek’s beef took on her during an interview with Zane Lowe last year. “It was one of the hardest parts of my career to date. At the time I did love both of them. I couldn’t erase the love that I have for my team, but I also couldn’t speak out. I couldn’t really say much, and I felt so imprisoned,” she said. “I was behind the scenes of course wishing it never happened. Even prior to it happening I tried to stop it from happening.”
Ross and Nicki have collaborated over a dozen times throughout their career, and have both appeared on each others' albums. However, it appears that relations between the two aren’t improving anytime soon.
Listen to the full interview above and catch up on Nicki Minaj’s The Joe Budden Podcast appearance on Genius now.
