Nicki Minaj is officially a single woman. The rapper confirmed on Thursday that she is no longer dating Meek Mill, her boyfriend of about two years.
Following some rumors that the couple had split up at the end of 2016, Nicki Minaj took to Twitter to clarify that she and Meek Mill were indeed no longer together, and that she was focusing on her music rather than her romantic life right now.
Nicki Minaj began dating fellow rapper Meek Mill at the beginning of 2015. Though they worked together on a number of songs, including Meek's tracks "All Eyes On You" and "Bad For You," their relationship did come with some professional drama. Most notably, Meek Mill engaged in a very public feud with Drake, whom Nicki Minaj has collaborated with several times on tracks like "Moment 4 Life," "Make Me Proud," and the "Anaconda" video. Meek Mill had accused Drake of not writing his own lyrics, and Drake fired back with a brutal diss track called "Back To Back," in which he taunted Meek by saying that Minaj was clearly the more prolific rapper in their relationship.
Throughout the Drake feud and a few other disses that Meek Mill was involved in, Nicki Minaj stayed by his side, not explicitly commenting on his hotheaded beefs with other rappers. The two rappers had always been affectionate in public up until the end of 2016, when fans started to notice that they weren't spending as much time together as they used to. TMZ pointed out that although Minaj and Meek Mill were both celebrating New Year's Eve in Miami, they made calculated plans to not run into one another throughout the night. A little less than a week into 2017, Minaj confirmed the breakup.
A bit of good new to come from the breakup is that Nicki Minaj is focusing on getting some new music out in 2017! Many of her fans expected Minaj to drop her fourth studio album in 2016, given that she had released her first three albums every two years beginning in 2010. Instead, Minaj focused on her film career, costarring in Barbershop: The Next Cut and beginning production on an autobiographical sitcom called Nicki. A few months back, Minaj teased her hungry fans by announcing a fake album called "Pick My Fruit Out," later letting them in on the joke after posting a ridiculous, fruit-inspired track list. But the year wasn't completely devoid of Nicki Minaj music --- she had a featured verse on the hit Ariana Grande track "Side To Side," and released a freestyle response to the buzzy Rae Sremmurd song "Black Beatles" called "Black Barbies."
Let's see how Nicki Minaj will translate her single status to hopefully a whole lot of new hit singles in 2017.
