The Nicki Minaj Little Mix Controversy Explained

So what exactly is going on between Nicki Minaj and the British girlband Little Mix, made up of Perrie Edwards, Leigh-Anne Pinnock, Jade Thirlwall, and formerly Jessie Nelson? Because it looks like major drama. 

The women actually all go back years, having worked together on the band's 2018 single, "Woman Like Me." Edwards even very much had Minaj's back amid her infamous feud with Cardi B, coming to the "Turn Me On" hitmaker's defense after Cardi suggested they wanted her for the song first. In a since deleted Instagram post in October 2018, Edwards claimed (via BBC), "Sorry Cardi hun but this is the T. We've always wanted the Queen." Then, in a Twitter post still available on Little Mix's page, the band explained that they chose to work with Minaj on the hit "because like we've said over and over for years, it's been a dream of ours to work with her since the beginning."

But, despite the past praise, we're guessing they probably won't be working with her again anytime in the near future after this round of serious shade.

Fast-forward to October 2021 and Jesy Nelson debuted her first solo single since leaving Little Mix in December 2020 amid rumors of lingering tension with her ex-bandmates. Nelson dropped the R&B influenced "Boyz" featuring Minaj on October 8, and things took a turn for the worse as the two seemingly started discussing one of Nelson's former bandmates during a social media livestream.

Nicki Minaj took no prisoners during an Instagram Live session with Jesy Nelson when she seemingly threw serious shade at at least one of Nelson's former Little Mix bandmates on October 11. It all went down as Nelson spoke about her "Blackfishing" controversy, claiming Leigh-Anne Pinnock spoke to her about it for the first time in 2020 (the band formed in 2011).

"If you was in this woman's group and you ain't talk about this s**t for 10 years and as soon as you see she got a video coming out with Nicki Minaj and Puffy, now you sending text messages and all this s**t... print those text messages out, bust you're a** open and shove them up your motherf**king ass," Minaj said, seemingly referring to Pinnock, but never mentioning her by name. "Stop trying to hurt people and kill people's lives and careers, this is the way people feed their families. Stop. If you want a solo career, baby girl, just say that," she added, claiming she believed the person was "jealous" of Nelson.

The drama appeared to stem from alleged Instagram DMs between Pinnock and influencer @nohun_. They shared now deleted screenshots from an apparent conversation in which Pinnock urged him to do a video about Nelson "being a black fish," while she also claimed Nelson had blocked her former bandmates and called her a "horrible person" (via NME).

It sounds like another Nicki Minaj/Little Mix collab is out of the question...