Following the release of Taylor Swift’s new album, The Life of a Showgirl, Nicki Minaj praised the singer-songwriter and favorably compared her to a battle rapper.
Just hours after the arrival of the highly anticipated record, Nicki fored off a series of tweets expressing her excitement as a fan. “And now… The sagittarius lashing spree culminates with The Life of a Showgirl,” she wrote. “Oh Taylor #Wood was EXACTLY what I needed tonight. Thank You.” After offering praise for “Wood”—a raunchy love song about Taylor’s fiancé, Travis Kelce—she highlighted a particular portion of “Actually Romantic” that has got fans speculating she’s dissing Charli XCX.
“Taylor said ‘I heard you called me boring Barbie when the coke’s got your brain,’” she wrote. “Why all the SAG’s giving out lashings tonight? Oh wow. And #Cancelled is diabolical. Let’s go TAYLOR!!!!!! … GO IN FOR THE KILL, TAYLOR. LET’S GO!!!!”
In a follow-up tweet, she compared Taylor Swift’s penchant for calling out people who have seemingly dissed her to that of a battle rapper. “The fact that Taylor is a battle rapper is sending me,” she wrote.
She concluded her praise for the album by once again coming back to “Wood,” a clear highlight for the rapper.
“His love was the key that opened my thighs,” she wrote, quoting the lyrics to the track. “New heights. Manhood. I ain’t gotta knock on wood. …It sounds cocky. Oh this writing will go over y’all heads. We up dancing to this. Yes ma’am. Yes Max. … Lol y’all I promise this is my last tweet about it but #Wood is exactly what falling in love with your soul mate ‘sounds like.’”
Not long after The Life of a Showgirl arrived on streaming platforms, fans quickly theorized that the song “Actually Romantic” features a reference to Charli XCX.
“I heard you called me ‘Boring Barbie’ when the coke’s got you brave,” she sings in the opening line of the song. In a different portion of the track, she also refers to an ex romantic partner who ghosted her, perhaps referring to Matt Healy, who is in the band The 1975 with Charli’s husband, George Daniel.
In addition to that, the song title could be a reference to Charli’s song “Everything’s Romantic,” but then there’s also the unconfirmed speculation that the Brat track “Sympathy is a Knife” is about Taylor Swift. In that song, Charli addressed her insecurities seeing someone “backstage at my boyfriend’s show,” and suggested that she hopes they “break up quick.”
Charli XCX, however, told New York Magazine in 2024 that Brat doesn’t include any diss tracks. In that same interview, Swift was quoted with praise for Charli XCX, and said, "I’ve been blown away by Charli’s melodic sensibilities since I first heard ‘Stay Away’ in 2011. Her writing is surreal and inventive, always."
Nicki Minaj’s praise for Taylor Swift comes amid her reignited beef with Cardi B, with whom she famously clashed years ago. The two have traded shots online, with Nicki referring to Cardi B as “Barney B,” and Cardi labeling her “Coccaine Barbie.” Things have continued to escalate, with them bringing each other’s partners, children, and alleged private matters into the mess.
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