Nicki Minaj has spoken out after rumors circulated that she hired Megan Thee Stallion’s former best friend, Kelsey Nicole, to advertise shoes from her LØCI range.
Earlier this month, a campaign for Nicki Minaj’s sneaker line, Loci, sent social media into a frenzy after users online noticed that it featured Kelsey Nicole.
Kelsey Nicole was once attached to the hip with Megan. The pair, who were best friends once upon a time, have had a public fallout in the media due to the infamous shooting incident, as she was riding in the vehicle with Megan and Tory Lanez the night Megan was shot in the foot in Los Angeles in July 2020.
In fact, Lanez’s defense attorney has previously claimed that Kelsey shot Megan.
Since then, the two men have gone on to live their separate lives, but not without online antagonizing, diss tracks, and retracted testimonies.
On Tuesday (October 1), LØCI by Nicki Minaj shared new Instagram photo ads for the Queens, N.Y. rapper’s sneakers, including a few featuring Kelsey Nicole modeling the new “Press Play” colorway.
In one ad, Kelsey is sitting on a bike with a subway speeding in the background. In a second ad on Kelsey’s Instagram post, she is sitting on a metal barrel reading a fictitious newspaper that is headlined “The Nicki Minaj LØCI Collection Has Landed.”
“Have y’all checked out the @locibynickiminaj shoe line?” Kelsey captioned the post. “Now available at @dtlrofficial & @shoepalace. I’m wearing the ‘Press Play’ shoe. This brand is eco-friendly & constantly working to protect future generations to come.”
After the photos went viral, social media users slammed Nicki Minaj and Kelsey Harris for linking up, calling it a petty move on both sides. Primarily since it’s widely known that Nicki and Megan have had a longstanding beef, which reached a fever pitch earlier this year when Megan appeared to take shots at Nicki on the track “Hiss” and Nicki returned fire on the song “Big Foot.”
On Sunday (October 6), Nicki Minaj shared a post on X, formerly known as Twitter, in which she cleared the air about using Megan Thee Stallion’s best friend to get back at her nemesis.
“The fact that @TheShadeRoom posted this lie five days ago, and I’m just now finding out,” she began. Chiiiiii LOL!!!!!!!! I love being booked and busy. ‘Models for my collection’? She posted a photo in my sneakers. Neither I nor my company knew anything about it until she posted it. So she did what many people did when they received my sneakers: They posted a photo in them.
The “Pink Friday 2” hitmaker did compliment the image, writing, “Kelsey def went all the way out with this professional-looking backdrop, though.”
“But she is in no way professionally connected to my sneaker brand…Btw, did Kelsey not tell them she wasn’t modeling for the line Barbz? Did she just let them think that? I gotta get caught up, y’all.”
