Ice Spice says she’s still got nothing but love for Nicki Minaj — even though she never signed to her label.
During a sit-down with Keke Palmer on the Baby, This Is Keke Palmer podcast, the Bronx star cleared the air about rumors that Nicki once tried to bring her on board Heavy On It. Around the 24-minute mark, Ice explained she was already locked into contracts when Minaj made her move.
“I tried to really let our lawyers handle everything and our managers, but I was already signed when she was trying to sign me,” Ice said. “So I think that’s where the hiccups were, because there was really no room anymore at that point to make a new deal. I’m signed to two labels, so that was already like a thing.”
She stressed there’s no bad blood: “It’s all love like always. I still look up to her. She’s mother.”
The two linked up twice in 2023 — first on the “Princess Diana” remix and then on Barbie World for the Barbie movie soundtrack. “Insane. Crazy, like, crazy, crazy, crazy,” Ice recalled. “I always wanted that to be the case, but it’s just like when it happens, you’re like, Whoa, is this real life? Two records with her, I was gassed. Of course I still am.”
She also revealed how encouraging Nicki was during their creative process: “We would do a lot of sending back and forth via text and stuff like that, but she would always, like, gas what I did. She would just be like, ‘Oh, I love your accent and like your tone and flow.’ And I would be screaming.”
Things got messy last June when leaked texts showed Ice calling Nicki “ungrateful” during a private rant to a former friend about contract talks. Neither rapper addressed it until Ice opened up in her July 2024 Rolling Stone cover story.
“We don’t have the closest relationship, you know? But we’re definitely good,” she told writer Jeff Ihaza. “We’re mutuals. We had smash records together.”
While Nicki and Ice no longer follow each other on Instagram, they still remain mutuals on X.
Reflecting on the betrayal, Ice said the real sting came from her ex-friend who leaked the messages: “I think that the saddest part of the whole situation, it’s somebody I knew for so many years and called my friend [and] had me open up and be vulnerable with them, and then took complete advantage of that for her own benefit. So that was the saddest part really, just feeling used, basically.”
