Nicki Minaj is facing a lawsuit from a former employee who claims the rapper smacked him in the face at a Detroit concert last year.
A 10-page complaint was filed in Los Angeles yesterday (January 3), in which Minaj and her company Pink Personality were named as lead defendants in the suit, with claims including assault, battery, and intentional infliction of emotional distress.
Per Rolling Stone, plaintiff Brandon Jovan Garrett claimed he was working for Minaj as a “day-to-day manager” when her head of security summoned him to a meeting at her dressing room in the Little Caesars Arena on April 21, 2024.
Garrett alleges Minaj was upset at the time, and that her stress about the state of her staff turned into “rage” after one employee used picking up her prescriptions as an example of his good performance.
According to the suit, Minaj was frustrated that Garrett had assigned the task to the other employee. Garrett says he tried to reason with the ‘Super Bass’ singer and remind her she wanted the prescription picked up “immediately,” and that he had no choice but to delegate as he was busy assisting Minaj in her quick-change room ahead of the show.
Minaj performing at Madison Square Garden. CREDIT: Jamie McCarthy/Getty Images for Live Nation
“Are you fucking crazy having him pick up my prescription?” she allegedly screamed at Garrett. “You have lost your fucking mind, and if my husband was here, he would knock out your fucking teeth. You’re a dead man walking. You just fucked up your whole life and you will never be anyone, I’ll make sure of it.”
Garrett went on to claim Minaj had “abruptly stood up, stomped her feet and walked aggressively” towards him while continuing to insult him, and further alleged she then “open-handedly struck” him on the right side of his face.
This reportedly caused his head to “swing backwards and his hat to fly off of his head,” with a second alleged strike from Minaj on his wrist knocking documents out of his hand. In his lawsuit, Garrett claimed that after the alleged attack, he had fled and locked himself in a bathroom until 4am – later reporting the incident to the police and flying back to his native Los Angeles.
NME has reached out to representatives of Minaj for comment.
Elsewhere, Minaj confirmed late last year that a new tour will be launched alongside the “next official album”, news that came less than a month ahead of the drop of the final deluxe version of her 2023 album ‘Pink Friday 2’.
In a four-star review of ‘Pink Friday 2’, NME wrote: “‘Pink Friday 2’ feels like a consolidation and refinement of everything Minaj can do – including dropping pop culture references that no other artist would think of. Thirteen years after ‘Pink Friday’, Nicki Minaj hasn’t lost her ability to catch us by surprise.”
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