Sociopolitical commentary has been ingrained in hip-hop from the genre’s beginning. Cardi B, Megan Thee Stallion, Lizzo and Quavo all supported Kamala Harris’s presidential run in 2024, with prominent rappers overwhelmingly backing Democrats over the years. Contrast that with Trump-loving rappers like Lil Wayne and Kodak Black, who were both granted presidential pardons for criminal convictions.

But Minaj joins a special category of hip-hop performers, including Ye (formerly Kanye West), whose sudden flattery of one of the most polarizing politicians in modern history has played out for all the world — and fans — to see.

The White House has welcomed the support from Minaj, with Vance posting late Wednesday that the entertainer sometimes described as the “Queen of Rap” is better than Cardi B (decidedly not a Trump fan). An official Trump account later replied to one of her posts with a fuzzy, probably artificial-intelligence-generated video of a caricaturized, dancing Vance. But the increased spotlight on Minaj’s politically charged posts has splintered the Barbz, Minaj’s passionate fan base for her music, which includes more than 80 songs that have surpassed 100 million streams on Spotify.

Midway through Trump’s first term, as the Department of Homeland Security separated thousands of migrant children from their parents at the U.S.-Mexico border, Minaj joined much of the entertainment industry in openly condemning the administration.

“I came to this country as an illegal immigrant at 5 years old,” she wrote on her now-deactivated Instagram account in 2018.“I can’t imagine the horror of being in a strange place and having my parents stripped away from me at the age of 5. This is so scary to me. Please stop this. Can you try to imagine the terror & panic these kids feel right now?”

That slam against the administration was hardly a one-off.

“Island girl, Donald Trump want me go home,” Minaj rapped in a remix of Rae Sremmurd’s “Black Beatles” after Trump won the 2016 election. She added in the song that she was “prayin’ all my foreigns don’t get deported.”

But it has always been difficult to tie Minaj’s politics down, complicated by the fact that she sometimes performs as characters Harajuku Barbie and Roman Zolanski. (She’s described the latter as a “crazy boy” who lives inside her.) She criticized President Barack Obama’s health care restructuring for not going far enough in 2012 and later rapped, “I’m a Republican voting for Mitt Romney” on a Lil Wayne mixtape. Minaj later denied this was meant to be an endorsement and thanked the president for understanding her “creative humor & sarcasm” after Obama suggested in a radio interview that her use of alter egos might have informed the rap.

Nor was Minaj entirely opposed to Trump when he began his first presidential campaign. “There are points he has made that may not have been so horrible if his approach wasn’t so childish,” she told Billboard in 2015. “But in terms of entertainment — I think he’s hilarious.”

Minaj continued this balancing act throughout 2016, supporting Obama initiatives while laughing at the apparent absurdity of Trump’s then-ascendant campaign. In April, at the Time 100 Gala, Minaj dedicated a performance of “Anaconda” to then-Vice President Joe Biden as well as Trump, “in the spirit of unity.”

For the remainder of the first Trump administration, Minaj supported specific liberal causes. She pulled out of a concert in Saudi Arabia, citing her support forthe rights of women and the LGBTQ community. In 2020, she redirected the proceeds from her collaboration with 6ix9ine, “Trollz,” toward the Bail Project in the midst of the Black Lives Matter protests spurred on by the murder of George Floyd. And when Biden won the 2020 presidential election, Minaj seemingly celebrated, posting a photo of Harris with the caption “We did it joe.”

She appeared to have largely soured on Trump by the end of his first term, even as he was starting to make inroads with some entertainers. She told Rolling Stone in 2020 that she’s “not gonna jump on the Donald Trump bandwagon,” in reference to the wave of hip-hop acts supporting the president’s then-reelection bid.

But in 2021, Minaj started to take sharper aim at Democrats, most notably expressing skepticism about coronavirus vaccines that conservatives were widely decrying, despite medical evidence that they saved lives. The rapper’s unsubstantiated claims that her cousin’s friend “became impotent” because of the shot caught the attention of the Biden administration, which offered to set up a call between Minaj and a doctor to answer questions she had about the vaccine. Both Anthony S. Fauci, who was then director of the National Institute of Allergy and Infectious Diseases, and Terrence Deyalsingh, former health minister for Trinidad and Tobago, debunked her claims. It’s unclear whether the call happened.

Minaj increasingly supported Trump in his second term, even as he oversaw harsher crackdowns on immigrant and LGBTQ+ communities. Minaj had historically spoken in support of her LGBTQ+ fans, telling Out in 2010 that gay men are “definitely a big part of my movement” and collaborating with trans artist Kim Petras on the song “Alone.”

In November, in what may have been a joke, she wrote to a parody Trump account on X, asking “Papi Trumpo” for honorary citizenship. She was evidently thrilled when the administration used her viral “Beez in the Trap” mash-up and featured her song “Va Va Voom” in social media posts, contrasting with other big-name artists, like Sabrina Carpenter, who have expressed anger and horror to find their music in the administration’s feeds.

That same month, Minaj found serious common ground with the White House over its highlycontested claims that Christians are facing genocidalpersecution in Nigeria. After Minaj thanked Trump for “taking this serious” in November, the president’s ambassador to the United Nations, Mike Waltz,reciprocatedwith a post calling her “not only arguably the greatest female recording artist, but also a principled individual who refuses to remain silent in the face of injustice.”

Two days later, a “very nervous” Minaj joined Waltz at U.N. headquarters in New York to deliver a speechabout the issue.

Screenshots shared online suggest Minaj has paid a price for her political pivot, losing hundreds of thousands or even millions of social media followers in the wake of her speech. “Even Drake has his papers,” rapper Azealia Banks wrote on X in September, according to Complex, mocking Minaj for ingratiating herself to Trump. “Even Cardi B isn’t a 40-year-old immigrant. … Doing dolphin tricks for the barbs in a country she can’t vote in is rusty babe.”

But if anything, Minaj has doubled down.

After the prominent Democratic governor of her home state of California, Gavin Newsom, expressed support for trans kids this month, Minaj went on a multi-post tirade: “Imagine being the guy running on wanting to see trans kids. Haha. Not even a trans ADULT would run on that,” she wrote on Friday. In other posts, she’s called him “Gavvy pooh,” and said Newsom “thinks he’s Tom Cruise only difference is, his next mission IS impossible.”

Minaj’s overt praise of Trump’s White House reached a peak over the past week, when she reposted videos of Trump and Vance, in one X post calling them “Heroes” and “The Good Guys.”

All this has left Minaj’s fans on high alert.

On the one hand, her fans are united by a discography many consider inspirational, even life-changing. Some are ignoring the political noise, more interested in whether Minaj drops a surprise release before the end of the year so she can extend her streak of years with a Billboard Hot 100 hit, the longest by a female rapper. Others are more focused on her next album release, set for March 27.

“For the 38372727th time nobody cares nor are we going to stop you from leaving,” one fan posted on Reddit after another user complained about Minaj’s recent controversies.

But a faction of her fans, sometimes called “Edgy Barbz” because of their relatively critical perspectives on Minaj’s behavior, have been pulling back their support or stepping back from the fan community entirely.

“It’s okay to admit that someone you wish the best for has screwed up. Not all their RIGHTS from the past make up for the current blatant wrongs,” one Reddit user wrote. “… To go from referencing your own journey as an immigrant to the things I’m seeing? And the people she’s aligning herself with?”

Spokespeople for Vance, Waltz and Minaj did not respond to requests for comment.

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