‘Queen’ Dethroned: Did Nicki Minaj Postpone Her Tour for Low Ticket Sales?
The Queen may be receiving mounting evidence she's been dethroned — a new report says Nicki Minaj has temporarily canceled her United States tour dates as consequence of low ticket sales.
Minaj, who performed at the 2018 MTV Video Music Awards Sunday (August 20), is finding less of an audience elsewhere — Live Nation announced this week that her forthcoming concert series with Future has been indefinitely postponed, perhaps due to slagging ticket sales.
The European leg of her tour, though, is proceeding as planned.
"Following her unforgettable VMA performance, Nicki Minaj has decided to reevaluate elements of production on the NickiHndrxx Tour," a Live Nation spokesperson told E! News in a statement. "The outing will now kick off in Europe this coming February as planned. Nicki has decided to contribute more time to rehearsal ahead of the tour's launch to make certain her fans get the absolute best quality show that they deserve."
Minaj addressed the cancellation in a Twitter video posted Wednesday (August 22), and said her United States tour is now set to kick off in May 2019.
"Hey, you guys. Future and I will now start the European leg of our tour first, so those dates will stay exactly the same. And the U.S. leg of the tour will now start in May," she said. "Because of that, with Future's schedule, I may have to take another co-headliner, or I may just do it like I did with the Pinkprint Tour, and it wouldn't be like a co-headliner; I probably would just have like three or four opening acts. I still am going to do Australia in January, and this is all happening because I pushed my album back two months, and I just finished writing and recording literally hours before the album came out. So, now I just simply don't have the time to rehearse and be on the road in time to give you guys the level of a show I need to give. Jamie King and I are working tirelessly to give you guys the best show of my life, and I really apologize, but it'll be worth it."
A source told Page Six on Tuesday (August 21): "Nicki's tour could be the most disappointing ticket sales of the year for any artist. These are big arenas with up to 20,000 capacities. Sales for opening night in Baltimore is 2,000 tickets. L.A. is 3,400, New Orleans 1,000, Denver 1,300, Chicago 3,900. Even her hometown Brooklyn is only 5,050."
The news comes just days after Minaj lashed out at Travis Scott, Kylie Jenner and Spotify, accusing each of holding her back from achieving the No. 1 spot on the Billboard 200 with her latest LP, Queen. She said Scott's latest gift bundle propelled him past her unfairly, and that the streaming service under-delivered promotion it had promised her.
"Travis sold over 50K of these," Minaj wrote of Scott's "season pass" bundles in a series of tweets. "With no requirement of redeeming the album! With no dates for a tour, etc. I spoke to him. He knows he doesn’t have the #1 album this week. I love my fans for the #1 album in AMERICA! I’ll explain on #QueenRadio 4 albums in, #1 in 86 countries."
"Spotify put drake’s face on every playlist but told me they’d have to teach me a lesson for playing my music 10 mins early on #QueenRadio. Even tho they’ve been giving away my music for free for years & I am one of the top Spotify artists of all time," she later added.