In most cases, hip-hop beef is stupid, and it’s usually fairly easy to tell why one rapper is going after another. Nowadays, it’s almost always due to jealousy. Either a neophyte rapper is targeting an older rapper because of their success, or a faded veteran rapper is attacking a relative (and relatively successful) newcomer. It’s pretty simple.

For the past several months, Lil Kim has been going hard on Nicki Minaj. While I guess the genesis of it is a couple of relatively soft barbs that Nicki threw out, I would also imagine the majority of it comes from Kim either feeling like the throne she never really had has been threatened, and/or Kim’s trying to figure out a way to get herself back into the limelight.

‘Cause, let’s face it. When was the last time Kimberly Jones was relevant? Her last album, The Naked Truth, came out six years ago. Despite the press from Kim’s “Countdown to Lockdown” TV show and her impending incarceration, the album didn’t even go Gold. At any rate, let’s be charitable and say it’s been six years since Kim last had a hit. Since then, she had a minor hit single with T-Pain, competed in “Dancing with the Stars”, and…what else? Other than looking like the biggest black plastic surgery disaster not named Michael Jackson, not much.

So Kim has released a new mixtape entitled Black Friday, on which she is shown beheading Nicki Minaj. This mixtape allegedly sold over 100,000 copies on PayPal when it was released a few days ago. There are so many things wrong with this-the most obvious of which being…PayPal?

PayPal?

PayPal?

I feel like Allen Iverson at that press conference where they jumped down his throat about not attending practice and then he repeated the word “practice” in disbelief about 100 times. Nicki Minaj has sold a million copies of Pink Friday on a major label in a depleted industry (an industry in which you could barely sell 400,000 units six years ago), and you’re crowing about dubious statistics on PayPal? Really?

Of course, you can also mention the fact that the drawing of Kim on the cover of the mixtape is several years old and came from the days before she started looking like an old Vietnamese lady. Backing away from aesthetics and into artistry: look, I’m not the world’s biggest Minaj fan, but have we even verified whether Kim writes her own lyrics? Have we ever seen Kim in a freestyle cipher? Whatever you might want to say about Nicki, at least the chick writes her own lyrics.

If I was Nicki, I would completely ignore Kim and go about my business. Career-wise, they’re so far apart right now, it doesn’t even make sense to respond. Of course, when the next female rapper comes out and throws darts Nicki’s way, she should probably look at Kim’s strategy and do the opposite. Better to move on to the next thing gracefully than embarrass yourself by looking desperate.