Nicki Minaj Calls Out Travis Scott, Spotify After Queen Debuts at No. 2 Behind Astroworld

Noah Yoo
Updated
In a series of tweets, she accuses Travis of artificially inflating his numbers and the streaming service of treating her unfairly

After debuting at the top of the charts, Travis Scott’s latest album Astroworld has notched another week at No. 1, Billboard reports. Coming in at the No. 2 spot is Nicki Minaj’s latest album Queen. Astroworld sold 205,000 equivalent units, with 78,000 from traditional sales. Queen, in the meantime, sold 185,000 units—78,000 were from traditional sales.

Nicki responded to the news in a series of tweets, calling out Travis Scott for selling “season pass” bundles for his upcoming Astroworld tour. “Travis sold over 50K of these,” Nicki wrote. “With no requirement of redeeming the album! With no dates for a tour, etc. I spoke to him. He knows he doesn’t have the #1 album this week.” She also implied that Billboard might change the rules based on the Astroworld rollout.

Later, she called out Spotify for their recent campaign promoting Drake’s Scorpion and claimed that she was being punished for debuting her record during her radio show. She wrote, “Spotify had to teach me a lesson but rewarded the man who has had an Apple radio show the longest; inadvertently helping the Apple platform the most.” She continued, “My label didn’t want to defend me for fear of Spotify trying to teach Ariana a ‘lesson’ too.”

Astroworld was the first album to unseat Drake’s Scorpion, which debuted at the top spot upon its release and spent five weeks straight in that position. This week, Scorpion is at No. 3. Travis’ album had the second-biggest opening week for an album in 2018, second only to Scorpion.

Following the release of Queen, Nicki made some changes to the album, which included the inclusion of her 6ix9ine and Murda Beatz collaboration “FEFE” as a bonus track. Read the op-ed “Nicki Minaj, 6ix9ine, and the Alarming Normalization of Predatory Behavior” on the Pitch.

See the video.

This article was originally published on August 19 at 4:27 p.m. Eastern. It was last updated at 5:10 p.m. Eastern.