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Sounds like hyperbole? Or clickbait? It might seem like it. But just stop and think for a minute.

Nicki Minaj has had a very eventful two weeks: new album, radio fights with her ex, another fight with a DJ/reality TV personality (for which she was subsequently clowned by Joe Budden), dropping new tracks featuring Nas and Tekashi 6ix9ine and more accusations of drug abuse. On Sunday night, she took things to another level.

The Queen rapper hopped on Twitter to air some grievances she had with her album sales that failed to reach #1 after being bested by Travis Scott’s Astroworld, which topped Minaj’s first week sales in its second week on the charts. Per Billboard, Nicki moved 185,000 equivalent album units with 78,000 in traditional album sales, while Scott sold 205,000 equivalent album units with a little over 78,000 in traditional album sales in the U.S.

Why? Well, Nicki blames the gap on a variety of reasons, most notably Scott receiving an ally-oop assist from his über famous bm Kylie Jenner, and their kid Stormi.

She went on to say that a technicality in how album units are bundled with merch and measured also influenced the raw numbers.

Nicki’s claims could easily be valid. As recently discussed on the HHSR Podcast, calculating streaming totals is still a newfangled process. It’s completely reasonable to conclude that Billboard reported totals that either weren’t accurate or didn’t tell the full story behind each record’s performance—but it likely won’t matter. And it’s worth noting Travis Scott didn’t appear to buy into the “Nicki has the true #1 album” hype, as evidenced by Monday’s MTV Video Music Awards performance.

Regardless if she’s right or not, Nicki comes off petty and bitter in this situation. She tried to play it off by adding that she had “spoken to Travis” and that “he knows he doesn’t have the #1 album”, and by claiming to find humor in the whole thing. That someone would fire off a string of tweets though, each pushing the 280 character limit (expanding to 280: one of the best things Twitter ever did), clearly are the actions of someone who is displeased, if not angry at the perception that her album somehow failed.

It’s reminiscent of that time 50 Cent and Kanye West went head-to-head on the same day in 2007. Kanye’s Graduation demolished Fif’s Curtis by nearly 300k album sales in their first week. The concept was a genius marketing ploy executed flawlessly by both men and their teams. But it was 50 who ended up with egg on his face, despite selling a shit ton of records. Of course, never one to let things go, Fif went on to defend his LP’s performance and declaring himself the winner by factoring in overseas sales which, let him tell it, put him over the top.

50 was never quite the same monster on the charts from that point forward. His next two studio albums (the only two he’s released in the 11 years since Curtis) sold only 160k and 47k respectively. A number of reasons factored into this sharp decline, not the least of which include Fif’s overall decline in popularity as a musician.

It feels like Nicki may be on a 50-like trajectory. Her last two albums each debuted #2, with Queen dropping nearly four full years after The Pinkprint, and with declining sales.  Now she’s starting wars with seemingly everyone over every reason under the sun, including trivial album sale stat-juking (and she’s doing it in a hypocritical manner, as pointed out by DJ Akademiks), and going so far as proclaiming La Flame “Hoe Nigga of the Week”. Like 50, she used international sales as a crutch to prop up her commercial success, and she brazenly compared herself to Harriet Tubman(!!!) for raising awareness of the alleged Billboard bundling blunder. These are all classic Curtis Jackson tactics used to retain relevancy at all cost when the music just isn’t moving quite like it used to.

Update: There are new reports that Nicki has now postponed the North American leg of her tour with Future amidst low ticket sales, and HNDRXX has left the tour altogether.

To her credit though, Barbie’s not going anywhere anytime soon. Her lead single (a dope record, btw) did win a Moonman for Best Hip-Hop at the VMAs, and she’s unquestionably still moving units. But between Remy Ma coming for her neck last year, the rise of Cardi B and Nicki’s neurotic internet insecurity reaching Kevin Durant status, Onika appears to be catching more fades than she’s dishing out these days.

Maybe it’s an untimely sign of things to come. OR MAYBE WE NEED RAPPERS LIKE HER SO WE CAN GET ON OUR FUCKING KEYBOARDS AND MAKE HER THE BAD GUY, CHUN-LI!