For months, Nicki Minaj has been hyping up the impending release of her new album Queen. She's already released singles like "Chun-Li" and "Bed," and she's made videos and awards-show appearances. She's got a tour with Future coming up. She's already had to push back the album's release once, and now it's supposed to come out next week. But the album's release could depend on whether Tracy Chapman hits her back.
As Complex reports, in some since-deleted tweets, Nicki has revealed that there's a song on the album that samples Tracy Chapman. Nicki didn't know the sample was on there, or that it was uncleared. Nicki says that the song "features 1 of the greatest rappers of all time." She doesn't want to change the album because it's "such a perfect body of work." But now she's considering pushing the release back a week so that she can hopefully get the sample cleared.
Here's what Nicki wrote in those since-deleted tweets:
So there’s a record on #Queen that features 1of the greatest rappers of all time. Had no clue it sampled the legend #TracyChapman - do I keep my date & lose the record? Or do I lose the record & keep my date? ♀️ do we push #Queen back 1week? Ugh! I’m torn, y’all help
Tracy Chapman, can you please hit me. ♀️ omg for the love of #Queen
Tracy Chapman isn't on Twitter, which might complicate things. And now Nicki is polling her fans on whether or not she should push back the release:
Since I may have asked it wrong.vote. You guys can only imagine how much this means to me. It’s such a perfect body of work love you. Long time.
— Chun-Li (@NICKIMINAJ) August 1, 2018
And in the meantime, here's Nice & Smooth's "Sometimes I Rhyme Slow," which, at least for now, is the greatest rap song that has ever sampled Tracy Chapman:
