Nicki Minaj sued a small-time celebrity gossip blogger Wednesday, saying she crossed a line this week with “cokehead” accusations – and suggesting that a mystery rival musician may be behind the account’s barrage of slanderous posts.
Filed in a New York federal court, the lawsuit targets vlogger “Nosey Heaux,” whose YouTube channel has just over 14,000 subscribers. Named as Marley Green in the lawsuit, “Nosey Heaux,” an LLC, also maintains branded Twitter and Instagram accounts, each with fewer than 4,000 followers. Minaj is a frequent topic across platforms.
The “TROLLZ” singer’s lawsuit says a Monday livestream, in which Green calls Minaj a cocaine addict, constituted willful slander, and seeks a jury trial for at least $75,000 in compensatory damages. “Plaintiff has never used cocaine,” the lawsuit reads.
Green says in the video that Minaj is “shoving all this cocaine, shoving in all this cocaine up her nose. Allegedly. Thank you. Allegedly. But we all know it’s true. F–k – listen, I can’t even say allegedly with that ‘cause I – we know it’s true. I’m not saying allegedly on that. Nicki Minaj is a cokehead.”
With that, Minaj had heard enough.
“Marley Green is a disgrace,” reads a statement from Minaj’s attorney Judd Burstein. “When this case is over, she will no longer be permitted to use the name ‘Nosey Heaux’ because we will take her trademark from her when she does not have enough money to pay the judgment. Anyone else who lies about Nicki will suffer a similar fate. My marching orders are to aggressively sue anyone with a media or social media following who damages her with intentional lies. Eventually, the lesson will be learned.”
The suit acknowledges the power differential between Minaj and the vlogger, calling her “the ultimate ‘nobody’” whose constant disparagement the superstar singer had thus far chosen to ignore. But buried within the lawsuit is the suggestion that what’s behind the account is more of a … “somebody.”
“On information and belief, and as discovery will likely reveal, Green has been acting as a proxy for another performer who, mistakenly believing that she and Plaintiff are stars of equal stature, has repeatedly used other social media intermediaries in a hopeless effort to advance her career at Plaintiff’s expense.”
For now, the identity of that other “performer” remains a mystery. Minaj, who has 26 million Twitter followers, seemed to be dropping more crumbs Wednesday, after the suit was filed:
Green did not immediately return messages via her various platforms on Wednesday, but did address the issue extensively, and was not backing down.
The suit, first reported by TMZ, does not make any mention of the Streisand effect, or the common phenomenon of amplifying unwanted attention by trying to suppress it.
Pamela Chelin contributed to this report.