Drake Teases ‘Fortnite’ Rap as Nicki Minaj Announces ‘Street Fighter’-Inspired Song

It’s been an interesting couple of days for fans of hip-hop and video games, with Drake teasing the possibility of a “Fortnite” reference in an upcoming song and Nicki Minaj announcing a single that seems to be named after a “Street Fighter” character.

Minaj drops two new songs on Thursday and one of them appears to be her second, this time much more focused, reference to classic fighting game “Street Fighter.” Minaj returned to Twitter after months of silence on Tuesday to announce that songs “Barbie Tings” and “Chun-Li” would be going live “everywhere” at 1 p.m. EST on Thursday. The image accompanying “Chun-Li” shows Minaj staring straight at the camera, decked out in everything Fendi, her hair in “Street Fighter” mainstay Chun-Li’s iconic “Ox horns” hairstyle, and the words Chun-Li spraying in pink across the baby blue backdrop. It wouldn’t be the first time Minaj has mentioned “Street Fighter” in one of her tracks. Her first, perhaps a stretch, reference to the game occurs in the opening lines of 2012’s “I Am Your Leader.” And hip-hop has long history with Capcom’s fighter.

On Tuesday night, Drake returned to “Fortnite” to play a bit more with Tyler “Ninja” Blevins, the streamer he teamed up with earlier this year to break Twitch streaming records. During the late-night game session, the topic of Drake’s upcoming music came up. You can watch the entire conversation in the clip below.

After Drake mentions someone sampling “Fortnite” music, Blevins tells Drake that he has to put some “‘Fortnite’ lingo” in his upcoming album. “It has to happen, it just gotta be the right way,” Drake said. “I say when [developer Epic Games] gives me the emote. When Epic gives me the ‘Hotline Bling’ emote, I’ll do it, but until then I’m on strike.” Drake goes on to say that Epic needs to put a lot more emote dances in the game, including the shoot dance and the Uzi shoulders. In “Fortnite,” players can get their characters to perform specific dances in the game if they’ve unlocked them. Those dances, so far, are mostly dated, including moves like the Worm.

Variety reached out to Capcom and Epic Games about the two potential crossovers.

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