In news that will come as a shocking revelation to gullible music fans everywhere, Chance the Rapper has said that Cardi B’s beef with Nicki Minaj was carefully “curated” by executives in the music industry to generate buzz.
Chance’s comments, made in an interview with Big Boy and reported by Complex, lifted the lid (a fraction) on the world of manufactured beefs in the rap industry.
Cardi B was carefully pitted against the more established Nicki Minaj to boost her aggressive and confrontational image, as hits like “Bodak Yellow” climbed the charts. Fortunately, this was one fight that never actually got physical—and both artists have since oscillated between dissing and offering props to the other.
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Chance, who has worked with both artists on separate occasions, opened up in a Thursday interview with Big Boy about why he believes that the beef was synthetic.
“A lot of that stuff is produced,” he said. “A lot of everything is curated before we get to see it. Like, all the information, the way that they phrase it to us... The way they put people against each other. It’s made for you to like, accept it a certain way, so a lot of people had to choose a side. I don’t want to speak for them at all, but I feel like to a certain extent they got pushed into that too, and I don’t think that all of that was a hundred percent their feelings.”
Chance praised Minaj and Cardi, who is currently wining plaudits for her role in the new movie Hustlers, saying: “Just being honest, they are two of the greatest recording artists. And that’s just facts. The way that their music touches people, the way they’ve impacted music? It’s been incredible.”
In the lengthy and wide-ranging interview, Chance also talked about Kanye West, who is increasingly portraying himself in quasi-religious terms, saying: “Ye is like one of my spiritual advisers, all he does is read the Bible and make samples and turn songs into gospel songs now.”
