Why did Nicki Minaj and Meek Mill break up?
They were, for a couple of years, one of hip-hip’s power couples. Nicki Minaj and Meek Mill’s romance played out under the glare of the celebrity-watching world, but, by 2017, it was done.
Public interest turned to the pair as early as 2014, when Mill featured on a couple of tracks on Minaj’s third album The Pinkprint. It was noted around the time that Mill had previously been tweeting in a decidedly thirsty way about Minaj, so rumours quickly started to swirl.
At first, Minaj was adamant that nothing was going on between them. “We’re friends,” she asserted plainly, during an interview on Power 106 FM towards the end of 2014. But her denial soon began to seem dubious. Throughout 2015 the evidence that something was going on began to stack up. Photos of the pair were uploaded to social media, and people started getting ideas. Eventually there was no point in issuing denials.
The photos that fans were lapping up clearly showed that the pair were more than friends, and, soon enough, people were even of the opinion that they were going to get married. This part was decidedly not true.
Mill spoke with The Fader in May 2015, and, while he admitted they were a couple, he flat-out denied that they were engaged. “It’s definitely real,” he said of their relationship, “but it ain’t really time to get married yet. We’re still learning each other, feeling each other out.”
But pretty much as soon as their status as a celebrity couple became fully established within the zeitgeist, cracks began to appear. Minaj started to post tweets that, while cryptic, did seem to gesture towards some trouble with Mill. One of the tweets, posted on May 29, 2015, said, “Words can never be unspoken.”
Posts like this became a common occurrence, with Minaj saying vague things that, all the same, spoke to problems within her relationship. But, amid all that, she also at one stage tweeted that she was “in love with Meek.”
In October 2015, the pair appeared on the cover of GQ together, which confirmed their status as celebrity power couple. And, by the following April, Minaj was giving interviews that were explicitly looking ahead to things like marriage and kids. But months later, it all seemed to crumble.
In September 2016, Minaj tweeted, “Ok I’m back on the prowl…” That seemed to suggest she was single, and, a few months later, fans noticed she and Mill were no longer following each other on Instagram. Then in January 2017 came the final confirmation. “To confirm,” Minaj tweeted, “yes I am single.”
Where once the rumours about their romance swirled, now people were talking about what had led to their breakup. According to E! News, the pair had been fighting a lot and, ultimately, decided to end it. Problems with communication were cited as a contributing factor.