The Tartan

By Anna Cappella

On the morning of Friday, Feb. 2, Spotify notified me that Nicki Minaj had released a new song called “Big Foot.” Blissfully unaware of the rabbit hole I was about to go down, I pressed play and was accosted by one of the most terrifying songs I have ever heard. Nicki, previously eloquent and confident, starts “Big Foot” by going through a range of different voices, finally starting her flow with “how you f*ck your mother man when she die?” She follows this with a few disconnected and truncated lines that are really jarring to listen to, and a collection of lyrics, unequivocally aimed at Megan Thee Stallion, which caused me to furrow my brow.

Some examples are “for a free beat you can hit Megan raw / if you a ghostwriter party in Megan jaw,” “the b*tch fell off, I said, ‘get up on your good foot’” (referring to Megan being shot in the foot by Tory Lanez), and “f*cking your best friend man is crazy, you the type though.” She finishes off the song with a bizarre sequence where she talks about Megan “lying on [her] dead momma” and over a minute and a half of seemingly-drunken whispering where she praises her fans and threatens to release more “tea” about Megan. 

In “Big Foot,” Nicki shames Megan for her height, the darkness of her skin, and her cosmetic surgeries. She accuses her of lying about being shot in the foot, having sex with her ex-boyfriend’s best friend, and makes many, many references to her dead mother. The title and cover art for the song are in themselves a dig at Megan’s appearance in comparison to the tiny, Barbie-like image that Nicki has curated for herself. 

What, you ask, could possibly have inspired such a horrifying display of hate? Apparently, there is a long history of beef between Megan Thee Stallion and Nicki Minaj. I promise I really tried to learn about it, but it was more complicated than my organic chemistry homework, so I settled on the idea that the two artists are leaders in their genre. There is a natural competition between them that has been exacerbated by their personalities, the nature of rap, and a long list of serious and traumatizing events that both artists have gone through. 

“Big Foot” specifically, though, can be linked directly to Megan’s release of her own diss track just a few days before. In “Big Foot,” Nicki intones, “this little beggin wh*re, talkin bout Megan’s law.” In Megan’s song, “Hiss,” she says, “These hoes don’t be mad at Megan, these hoes mad at Megan’s law.” Megan’s Law states that anyone convicted of a crime involving sexual violence must be publicly registered. This law was enacted in 1996 after the death of Megan Kanka, a seven-year-old girl who was raped and murdered by a neighbor who had previously been convicted. 

Besides the obvious name coincidence, the reason that the mention of Megan’s Law in “Hiss” is so significant is that Nicki’s husband, Kenneth Petty, was sentenced to a year of house arrest in 2022 for failing to register his sex offender status in the state of California. The legal record of Kenny Petty is almost more confusing and distressing than the relationship between Nicki and Megan, but suffice to say that Megan’s jab at Megan’s Law was a direct hit at Nicki and Petty. 

But beyond that and one other line about Nicki and R. Kelly, also convicted of sex-related crimes, Megan does no damage with “Hiss” in comparison to “Big Foot.” The rest of the lines in “Hiss” are about Megan or just people in general. While I do think that any personal insults exposed in public in this way are unwarranted — on both Megan and Nicki’s sides — I also think that there is a big difference between calling someone out for hurting women, something they are already publicly known for, and trying to spread harmful, sexist rhetoric about someone. Sure, it’s possible that Megan threw the first stone, but it’s also rumored that she’s had to have security placed around her mother’s grave, and I just don’t think that she did anything that warranted that impact.

It’s also completely possible that this whole thing is for show — both artists have had an increase in streams following the releases. I think the way each artist has approached the conflict has taught me personally about what I value in an artist. I’ll say that Megan Thee Stallion’s often wholesome, confident music has been important to me in a variety of ways in the past few years. She’s unapologetic about who she is and the good and bad parts of her life. I don’t want to take sides in petty celebrity drama, but if I had to, I know whose side I would take.