Kathy Hochul has some advice for Nicki Minaj, and it has nothing to do with music. “Stop going to Trump rallies because it’s poisoning your mind,” the New York governor told reporters, after the rapper went on X and called her an “evil woman.”
It’s a strange turn for two people who were once on the same side. Back in 2018, Minaj encouraged New Yorkers to support Hochul during that year’s campaign. Seven years and one political conversion later, she’s telling them to vote her out.
Minaj’s posts didn’t stop at name calling. She questioned why Democrats keep backing Hochul, accused the governor of failing to speak out against wrongdoing, and urged voters to get behind Republican challenger Bruce Blakeman instead.
She also dug up a moment Hochul would probably rather forget. In 2024, the governor suggested that some Black children in the Bronx didn’t know what a computer was, a remark that drew a wave of criticism and an apology from Hochul. For Minaj, who grew up in Queens, it was clearly the sharpest weapon in the arsenal.
Hochul didn’t bother relitigating that comment. Instead she went after the company Minaj keeps, suggesting the rapper spend less time online and stay away from Trump’s political events entirely.
That company has changed a lot. Minaj has become an outspoken Trump supporter, even appearing alongside the president at a Michigan rally.
It’s a shift that has split her fan base and turned her timeline into a political battleground as often as a music one.
Blakeman, meanwhile, saw an opening and took it. The Republican candidate publicly welcomed Minaj’s criticism and encouraged her to help him defeat Hochul, which is about as warm an invitation as a campaign can extend to a celebrity with a massive online following.
The stakes are real for Hochul. She became governor in 2021 after Andrew Cuomo resigned, then won a full term in 2022 by a tighter margin than Democrats in New York are used to.
With the November 3 election approaching, any noise that peels off even a sliver of her coalition is worth paying attention to.
Still, there’s a fair argument that none of this moves the needle. Celebrity endorsements generate headlines far more reliably than they generate votes, and plenty of Minaj’s followers don’t live in New York or vote at all. Hochul’s team may be betting that engaging with the feud costs less than ignoring it.
On the other side, Minaj isn’t a random influencer weighing in from afar. She’s a New Yorker with a direct line to younger and Black voters, two groups Democrats have leaned on heavily in the state.
If she keeps pushing Blakeman between now and November, that pressure doesn’t disappear just because the governor brushed it off at a press availability.
Neither side looks ready to let it go. Minaj hasn’t walked anything back, Hochul has already taken her shot, and Blakeman is clearly hoping the rapper’s next post comes with his name in it.
