Home » Latest » Celebrity » Why Travis Scott Can’t Stand Nicki Minaj

Why Travis Scott Can’t Stand Nicki Minaj

7

InfoSearched 32 0 Celebrity

6.7

SaveSavedRemoved 2

A No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200 turned into one of hip-hop’s longest-simmering grudges.

In August 2018, Travis Scott and Nicki Minaj both dropped major albums in the same window — Scott’s “Astroworld” and Minaj’s “Queen” — setting up a direct chart showdown neither artist walked away from clean. When “Astroworld” held the No. 1 spot for a second straight week, Minaj didn’t just lose the crown quietly. She went to Twitter and her Beats 1 show to say the whole thing was rigged, and the fallout has followed both of them ever since.

• “Astroworld” logged 205,000 equivalent album units in its second week, edging out “Queen’s” 185,000 units to keep Scott at No. 1.
• Minaj accused Scott of gaming the chart by bundling digital copies of “Astroworld” with concert tour passes and merchandise before dates were even announced.
• Tension boiled over into a public sighting at the 2018 MTV Video Music Awards, where Scott had his seat moved to avoid sitting near Minaj.

The Chart Battle That Started It

The numbers were close enough to sting. “Astroworld” pulled 205,000 equivalent album units against “Queen’s” 185,000, a gap of just 20,000 units that kept Minaj’s fourth studio album stuck at No. 2 for a second consecutive week. For an artist who had built her career on chart supremacy, that margin was infuriating — and Minaj made sure everyone knew it.

Rather than let it go, Minaj argued that Scott’s total didn’t reflect real album sales in the traditional sense. She pointed to his tour-bundle strategy — pairing digital downloads of “Astroworld” with concert passes, season passes, and merch like t-shirts and hoodies, sold before any tour dates were officially on the calendar. Under Billboard and Nielsen’s tracking rules at the time, those bundled sales counted toward equivalent album units, and Minaj wasn’t shy about calling that a loophole rather than a legitimate win.

Queen Radio Turns Personal

Minaj didn’t stop at chart methodology. On her Beats 1 program, Queen Radio, she escalated the attacks, branding Scott the “Hoe N—a of the Week,” mocking him as “auto-tune man,” and calling him a “stupid f–k” on air while insisting she actually had the real No. 1 record that week regardless of what Billboard published.

She called him the “Hoe N—a of the Week” and “auto-tune man,” insisting she had the real No. 1 no matter what Billboard said.

The attacks didn’t stay confined to Scott. Minaj also went after his partner, Kylie Jenner, accusing Scott of leaning on Jenner’s massive social media following — and even their infant daughter, Stormi — to move units after Jenner promoted his tour passes to her audience. That accusation pulled Jenner into a fight she hadn’t picked, and it hardened the sense that this wasn’t just a chart dispute anymore.

Scott’s Silence and the VMAs Standoff

Scott largely refused to engage in the back-and-forth publicly, letting Minaj’s Twitter threads and Queen Radio segments go unanswered in the press. But the friction was visible enough that at the 2018 MTV Video Music Awards, Scott requested his seat be moved specifically to avoid an uncomfortable run-in with Minaj — a small logistical detail that told fans everything about where things actually stood between the two.

That kind of quiet avoidance, paired with Minaj’s loud accusations, is a dynamic that’s shown up in plenty of other industry rivalries where one side goes scorched-earth in public while the other tries to starve the story of oxygen.

Chart Feud Reveals Industry Trends

Beyond the personal shots, the Scott-Minaj clash forced a real conversation about how Billboard and Nielsen calculated equivalent album units, specifically around merchandise and ticket bundling. Scott wasn’t the only artist using tour-pass bundles to juice first-week numbers, but the size of the gap between “Astroworld” and “Queen” — and Minaj’s willingness to make it a public fight — put the practice under a spotlight it hadn’t gotten before.

The scrutiny didn’t change the outcome of that particular chart week, and it didn’t get Minaj her No. 1. What it did was cement the animosity between two artists who, three years removed from the release dates, still hadn’t publicly patched things up.