She Explains the Iggy Azalea Shade

The latest feud going on in the rap game has been said to be between Nicki Minaj and Iggy Azalea after the BET Awards. While claiming to not be throwing any shade, Nicki Minaj made the World's Best Shade-Throwin' Face as she made a pointed statement about rappers who don't write their own songs. "What I want the world to know about Nicki Minaj is, that when you hear Nicki Minaj spit, Nicki Minaj wrote it," she said with the side-eye to end all side-eyes. It didn't take the media long to seize upon that moment and claim it as a slight to Iggy Azalea, who is rumored to have ghost writers for her work. However, Minaj clarified that she doesn't hate Iggy Azalea on Twitter and that the feud was just a media invention — in the most bewildering way possible.

"The media puts words in my mouth all the time and this is no different. I will always take a stance on women writing because I believe in us!" said Minaj in a series of tweets she posted Wednesday morning. "...I've congratulated Iggy on the success of Fancy, publicly. She should be very proud of that. All the women nominated should be proud. That will never change my desire to motivate women to write."

It's nice of Minaj to clarify her comments, and I never believed that she and Azalea were feuding to begin with, but her clarification doesn't make any sense. How was pointing out that you write your own songs while giving the camera an aside glance supposed to motivate any women to write? How was it supposed to motivate anyone at all to do anything but feel bad if they don't write their own songs?

Newsflash: There are a lot of artists that don't write their own songs. Being a songwriter and being a singer aren't necessarily the same thing. It's great that Nicki Minaj wants to encourage more women to let their thoughts flow into their pens, but that has nothing to do with what she said at the BET Awards. What she said and the way she said it was throwing shade, plain and simple.

If she was hoping to inspire women to write, then this Twitter rant is the speech that she should have made at the BET Awards. Her acceptance speech was almost three minutes long. I'm sure she could have fit some of this in if she had really wanted to. While I'm glad that Nicki Minaj is knocking down the idea that she was taking shots at Iggy Azalea, I'm not buying her explanation. Shade and motivation are two different things.