Ariana Grande backs Nicki Minaj in Travis Scott feud

[dar0ck]

Ariana Grande has thrown shade at Travis Scott amid the ongoing feud between the rapper and her pal, Nicki Minaj.

The 25-year-old songstress performed for fans at a listening party in Chicago on Wednesday (22Aug18) in celebration of her fourth studio album, Sweetener, and took the opportunity to publicly support her best friend Nicki, who launched a scathing attack on Travis on Sunday after his Astroworld album reached number one in the U.S. charts ahead of her fourth record, Queen.

During the show, Ariana's manager Scooter Braun took to the stage to declare that Sweetener would "100 per cent" make it to number one this week - a claim the Side To Side singer was reluctant to support in the wake of Nicki's claims.

"We have three days left, you don’t know what Travis could pull," she quipped in a series of fan videos posted to social media at the event.

Nicki and Travis beef was ignited on Sunday when the Super Bass singer claimed he had used underhand promotional tactics to get to number one, suggesting his girlfriend Kylie Jenner, with who he shares seven-month-old daughter Stormi with, had helped him sell season passes and merchandise via her 113 million Instagram followers to boost album sales.

"I put my blood sweat & tears into writing a dope album only for Travis Scott to have Kylie Jenner post a tour pass telling ppl (people) to come see her & Stormi. lol (laughing out loud). Im actually laughing," she penned to her 20.3 million Twitter followers. "#Queen broke the record of being number 1 in 86 countries. Thank Jesus & thank you to my fans (sic)."

The 35-year-old then put Travis, 26, on blast again during her Apple Music Beats 1 show, Queen Radio, on Tuesday and contested Astroworld's alleged sales figures, following reports the album had sold 205,000 copies in its second week of release compared to Queen's 185,000.

"What we're not gonna do is have that Auto-Tune man selling f**king sweaters telling you he sold half a million albums, because he f**king didn't. You stupid f**k," Nicki raged. "You got your f**king homeboy talking for you and you got your girlfriend selling tour passes. Stop it. Knock it the f**k off."

Travis has remained tight-lipped over the rapper's claims and has so far failed to address them publicly, however, he appeared to reference the animosity at the 2018 MTV Video Music Awards on Monday as he took to the stage to reiterate that his album is indeed "number one".