Nicki Minaj & Drake Defend Their Written Rhymes

Critics recently slammed both Young Money MCs for not spitting off the dome.


Check out what Drake and Nicki has to say…


Nicki Minaj isn’t worried about the people who criticized her for not spitting off the dome during the BET Hip-Hop Awards cyphers.


“How many people on that cypher do you think spit off the top of their head?” Minaj fumed to Richmond, Virginia, radio host TT Torrez last week. “I don’t write off the top of my head. I can’t come up with those punch lines and metaphors off the top of my head. Everybody besides KRS-One, who else can you name that spit off the top of their head? They will tear apart a female, like, ‘She did a good verse, but she wrote it.’ … The only thing that matters is that I wrote on a paper and memorized it. Wayne never wrote my sh–. No one ever wrote my stuff.”

Nicki’s Young Money family member Drake went through some of the same problems earlier this year. When he was on Funkmaster Flex’s Hot 97 show, Drake spit his rhymes while reading them from his BlackBerry. Some bloggers and fans wrote negative responses, and comedian Affion Crockett even posted a video spoof online.

“I’ll never forget the night, man, when I went up to Hot 97, and it wasn’t scheduled,” Drake explained. “It wasn’t like, you know, ‘Drake’s coming up here Tuesday.’ It was literally like, ‘Funk Flex wants to meet you,’ and bam, like, two seconds later, it was like, ‘Let’s go on the radio and just kill New York.’ I’ll never forget how nervous I was. It was such a rookie hip-hop moment — and, obviously, the controversy of me pulling out my phone and rapping off my phone because I just wasn’t prepared. A lot of people don’t know the difference between freestyle or off the top and coming to a radio show knowing you got to go there, so you got verses cued up in your head, whether they be off your upcoming album or verses just that you have laying around. A lot of artists get that preparation time.”


Drake said the moment was an important steppingstone.

“That moment, just as far as hip-hop, as far as MCing goes, that moment was one of those … it was just, ‘Whoa! I’m really here and I got to get better. I got get to be better than this. I can never be caught off guard again,’ ” Drake said. “That was probably one of the most interesting moments of my life this year. I’m a writer, man. I appreciate the elements of hip-hop. I appreciate a guy like Common who goes city to city and just spits at the crowed for 10 minutes about everything he sees. I admire talent like that, because that’s just not my creative process. So, you know, as far as moments this year go, though, I’ve had amazing stories. I don’t want to tell them all in interviews, because then Thank Me Later will just be empty, so I think I’m going to tell them in this album as vivid as I possibly can.”




Props: MTV