Billie Eilish and Nicki Minaj at the Billboard Women In Music in 2019. (Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for Billboard)
Billie Eilish fans aren’t best pleased with Nicki Minaj after learning that a teased collaboration between the pair on the iconic rapper’s new album was just a sample.
Trinidadian rapper and singer-songwriter Minaj dropped her much-anticipated fifth studio album Pink Friday 2 on Friday (8 December).
Featuring 22 songs, the album, which follows on from Minaj’s 2010 release Pink Friday, includes the a number of high-profile collaborations with artists such as Drake, Lourdiz and Lil Wayne.
However, it was Grammy award-winning Eilish’s feature on the album that really had fans in a chokehold.
A day before the album’s drop, Pop Crave shared an image of the two artists side-by-side on X, formerly Twitter, with the caption: “Nicki Minaj confirms Billie Eilish is a featured artist on Pink Friday 2.”
Fans flooded the post with adoration for the “iconic collab”, with many calling it “incredible” and dubbing the pair “mothers”. At the time of writing, Pop Crave’s post has been been viewed over 432,000 times and liked 15,000 times.
But, after playing the album, fans were disappointed to discover that only a 50-second sample of Eilish’s 2018 song “when the party’s over”, had been used to open Minaj’s song “Are You Gone Already”.
In recent weeks, Eilish has opened up about her sexuality – first revealing that she is attracted to women in an interview with Vanity Fair, then confirming it during a red carpet interview by asking: “Wasn’t it obvious?”
Although the “What Was I Made For” hitmaker’s coming out has seen the pop sensation lose a small fraction of her 110 million Instagram followers, her loyal fans still have her back – and those who left arguably weren’t real fans anyway.
Eilish stans were less than impressed about the snippet of “when the party’s over” featured on Pink Friday 2, with one social media user writing: “I thought there was gonna be an actual collab with Billie …”
Another disappointed fan posted that they wanted a feature, with a comment under the post adding “me and you both”.
Someone else commented “Billie wasn’t actually singing”, while others questioned why Minaj used Eilish’s sample.
Despite some upset fans, others have praised “Are You Gone Already” as being worth the wait, calling it “so perfect” and “powerful”, with one fan adding that the song “made me cry so fast”.