Of all the people upset about the NFL announcing Kendrick Lamar as the headliner for the 2025 Super Bowl halftime show, nobody is more upset than Nicki Minaj. The Young Money rapper lambasted the NFL’s music partner, Roc Nation, and especially Roc Nation’s owner, Jay-Z, for what she believed was a snub at her onetime mentor Lil Wayne. With the Super Bowl returning to New Orleans next year, many fans believed Wayne was a shoo-in for the headlining gig — a presumptuous assumption, to be sure — and Minaj let her disappointment do the tweeting.
While she is going out of her way to defend her former mentor, one of Jay-Z’s past proteges quickly did the same for him. Memphis Bleek, who came up under Jay’s wing throughout the late ’90s and early 2000s, had a chuckle about the whole situation on Twitter, writing, “N****s is mad mad,” alongside a video of Jay giving an interview to Hot97. In the video, Jay posits, “When you hear people’s gripe against me, it’s always about what I didn’t do for them… They don’t say I did anything to them, they say I didn’t do something for them.”
Although Bleek didn’t name names, it’s pretty clear from his response that he thinks the backlash against Jay comes mainly from folks who think the rap titan owes them something. And as the beneficiary of Jay’s largesse, Bleek himself can tell you, the dinner with Jay ain’t all it’s cracked up to be. Being associated with him doesn’t automatically grant one success — but some folks still want to ice skate uphill, you know?