Lil Wayne has received his long-overdue flowers from the BMI Awards — and Nicki Minaj sent her love along, too.
The Young Money head honcho received the performance rights organization’s Icon Award on Wednesday (September 6), and he took the time to thank his family and friends after being honored by NLE Choppa and Big Freedia, amongst others.
But the special part of the night came when the “Super Bass” rapper came through via video conference to send her support to her good friend and former label boss.
“Where do I begin?” she said. “You know what, I just wanna say, I so greatly appreciate your contributions that you have made to the culture of rap. Thank you for all of the inspiring things you’ve said to me personally to make me want to go super-duper hard. Thank you for just always being the genius you are and the leader you are.”
Lil Wayne receives his flowers from Nicki Minaj as he wins BMI Icon awardhttps://t.co/52WCdDsvQrpic.twitter.com/JnxZdRpWnW
— HipHopDX (@HipHopDX) September 9, 2023
Nicki Minaj and Lil Wayne have had quite the mutual admiration society going on for quite some time.
Back in June, when the “Lollipop” rapper appeared on former NBA players Matt Barnes and Stephen Jackson’s All the Smoke podcast, Weezy was asked where he ranks Minaj in terms of all-time female MCs.
“Ain’t nobody fucking with Nicki,” he declared with little hesitation. “They come after.”
Nicki Minaj caught wind of his comments and posted clips from the interview to her Instagram while returning the compliment by calling Wayne the greatest rapper of all time.
“I’ll give u a dollar if you can find a lie,” she wrote. “When the greatest rapper of all time believed & still believes in you. I sure did lean on your confidence & u sure were ALWAYS there.
“Til this day- when I send you smthng you send a verse bakk. @liltunechi we love you so much. We thank you so much. Long live the BAR! Bar for Bar. No pun intended #MulaBaaabay!!! @mackmaine4president.”
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Elsewhere in his All the Smoke interview, Lil Wayne talked about discovering Nicki Minaj and the requirements he had to sign someone to Young Money. “We were looking for artists at the time and we set out to look for artists I wanted to meet,” he said. “I wanted a New York female [artist].
“I always tell ’em, I wanted to make sure she had two things, she was missing, lacking two things: Do not sound like Foxy [Brown], do not sound like [Lil’] Kim, you know what I mean?
He continued: “And when I heard, Nicki was sounding like me. She was changing her voice up, I was like, ‘Okay.’ Like, I ain’t never seen this. This rare. New York female artists, I had to keep telling ’em, ‘Yo, don’t do that, don’t say that.’”
