Trina is breaking her silence on the controversy surrounding her “BAPS” collaboration with Nicki Minaj.
Earlier this week, Reginald Saunders, an A&R executive for Trina’s Rockstarr Music Group, called Minaj a “deceiver and manipulator” after she reportedly refused to promote the track and shoot a video for it.
“This isn’t the first time @nickiminaj has pulled this stunt and trust me it’s cool. I can’t get over how fake people can be for a Lil fame , likes and followers,” said Saunders. “I can’t wait to see how all this is about to play out because you can’t stop karmas reign, shame on you .. I mostly feel sorry for the #barbs because they have no clue the deceiver and manipulator their leader is.”
Trina’s A&R calls out Nicki Minaj over BAPS video. pic.twitter.com/MV8oOS4FOY
— BallerAlert (@balleralert) August 12, 2019
The original post has since been deleted, but Minaj did address the drama on Queen Radio this week and called out Trina for not checking her team.
“For your team or anybody’s team to feel like I owed you anything or to go out and disrespect me because I’m showing love to another female and you’re not gonna check them, then that’s not cool,” she said. “I dropped my own song that same day and still asked you, ‘Hey, come up to Queen Radio and promote your album.’ These are things that I don’t have to do. I’m not entitled to do anything for anyone. No one does anything for me. Y’all don’t go out your way to stop the hate and jump in front the hate train for me and do all that shit.”
Trina weighed in on Instagram Live Wednesday, downplaying rumors that she and Nicki have beef. “This isn’t about Nicki Minaj and a video. I had a 45-minute conversation on the phone with Nicki Minaj about business, about my record, about this song, about everything. It’s not about a video. It’s bigger than a video. The video is just a portion what’s happening.”
During their conversation, she acknowledged that Nicki did her part and doesn’t fault her. “That wasn’t a discussion that we had. The discussion was more so about the business. I respect that. She did her part. It’s up to me and my team to do our part. That’s how I feel about it. This is my project. I worked six years for this. I don’t expect nobody—not Nick, not nobody else on the album, not my team, not nobody to do what I need to be done for my project.”
She also accepted accountability on behalf her team. “My team speaking out, my team got so much to say, I’ma take the blame for my team ‘cause guess what, me and my team, we dropped the ball,” she added. “Bad business is what’s causing all this havoc to happen. All this nonsense, all this drama, this personal, everybody got an opinion, that’s what it is, it’s bad business. It has nothing to do with any artist that’s featured on my album.”
During her IG Live session, Trina revealed that all the features on her album The One, including Nicki, were done based on her personal relationships and no money was exchanged. “However you feel, I’m not gonna sit here and allow or accept you to be disrespectful to nobody that contributed to my album. I put out a great body work. I put out an amazing album. I worked extremely hard. There’s no major, there’s no nothing. There was just Trina, the grind, my relationship, and my name, my brand. Every feature on my album are people that believed in me, that did favors for me. I didn’t pay for these features. They were favors. Do you know what a favor is? That means I f**k with you, that’s why I did this favor.”
She also defended Nicki and chided her A&R for disrespecting her. “It’s a lot stuff that’s going on. Everybody’s frustrated. Everybody has an opinion and you’re entitled to that, but you’re not gonna disrespect nobody, another female artist,” she said. “You’re not gonna disrespect Nicki Minaj or nobody else that’s on my album because these people did this f my face and my favor.”
In the end, Trina has decided to take the high road. “I’m not here for the blame game. I don’t do the messy publicity stunts, the public—all that shit, I don’t do that. I’m not an Internet thug or Twitter fingers. I don’t do all that. I’m not gonna play the blame game. I’ma take full responsibility from everything that came from my side. This is my project, my album. I’ma stand on 10 toes and deal with that.”