Battle between Lil Kim vs. Nicki Minaj gets bigger

(EW.com) -- Rap fans got a salty side dish this holiday weekend to go with their turkey-cran sandwiches. For months, the buzz has been on Nicki Minaj, whose recently released "Pink Friday" features a track, the Eminem-guesting "Roman's Revenge," that many took as a side-slap to Lil' Kim (sample lyrics: "Look at my show footage, how these girls be spazzin' / So f--- I look like gettin' back to a has-been? / Yeah, I said it, has-been /Hang it up, flatscreen /Haha plasma.") And last Friday, the Queen Bee bit back. "It'll be a murder scene, I'm turning 'Pink Friday' to 'Friday the 13th,' " Kim spat over Pharoahe Monch's inimitable Godzilla-sampling "Simon Says" horns. "I hate you Lil' Kim clone/clown, all this buffonery, the sh-- stops now ... We all know your last name is what got you your job, you's a put-together gimmick, something like a collage." And later: "That's cool, I was the first one wit' it / You'se a Lil Kim wannabe you just hate to admit it / I'm the blueprint you ain't nothin' brand new / Check your posters and videos / You'll always be number two."
As rapfix reports, Minaj doesn't bear Kim's wrath alone; Drake gets his moment too: "Yeah, this hood sh-- you and Drake ain't built for, this the sh-- the other b**** almost got killed for."
That brief quote from Minaj at the beginning comes from an interview Nicki gave Hot 97 last week: "You gotta be careful when you pick fights," she told Angie Martinez. "That's what I've learned in this business; you just never know. I think people get me mistaken for a real Barbie. They forget where I'm from, and if I have to revert back, I can and I will. So don't play with me."
In that same interview, Minaj detailed her history with Kim: "When I saw her at [Lil] Wayne's concert, I stopped her and said, 'I want to make sure everything is cool with us because I'm a fan first. Is everything good?' 'Yeah everything good. We good,' " said Nicki, impersonating Kim's Brooklyn accent. "This is somebody I looked at highly. We took a picture, everything was good. But you wanna know what scares people? Success. When you don't make moves and when you don't climb up the ladder, everybody loves you because you're not competition. When you become competition, then people start. So I felt like, 'You're gonna go down in history now as a sore loser as opposed to going down in history as the Queen. Because if you can't beat 'em, join 'em." "When you see Gaga, you see Madonna -- but Madonna never hated on Gaga," Minaj continued. "Why in the black community we gotta hate on each other instead of saying, 'Thank you for showing me love, thank you for keeping my name alive'?" "The same way she opened doors for me, I'm opening doors for her. Nobody was playin' your music and you damn sure couldn't get an interview to save your life. You getting interviews, and every time you do interviews they're asking you about Nicki Minaj. So it's like we help each other. That's the point, we're helping each other. But if you are bitter, get a life." "I respect you, I love you, I've said it in every interview time and time again," she concluded. "And if that's not good enough with you, mama, then it's something deep-rooted in you. Something is bothering you inside, that's your insecurity. It's not Nicki Minaj." Is Minaj right to call out the black community's role in these rivalries? Does a scenario like this reinforce the narrow idea of a rap world with room for only one predominant female emcee, or is it leveling the playing field in a genre whose history of (largely male) diss tracks has actually elevated the form? ("Roman"'s title, after all, is almost certainly a reference to Roxanne Shanté's legendary UTFO diss "Roxanne's Revenge"). And can we just please stop this nonsense and talk about Rah Digga for a minute?