The Nicki Minaj lawsuit filed by her former tour manager Brandon Garrett is heating up, with Garrett now asking the court to make her turn over private text messages about him and the night he says she hit him backstage in Detroit.
According to court documents obtained by TMZ, Garrett wants the texts Nicki exchanged with other people about him and his job from January through April 2024. He is also asking for every message she sent about the alleged assault. Nicki is pushing back. She says she does not have any messages about the alleged incident. She also called some of his other requests overly broad and refused to hand those items over.
The fight over the texts is part of discovery in the Nicki Minaj lawsuit. Discovery is the stage of a case where each side can demand evidence from the other before trial. If the two sides cannot work it out, a judge decides what has to be turned over.
Garrett filed the Nicki Minaj lawsuit in January 2025 in Los Angeles Superior Court, accusing her of assault, battery and intentional infliction of emotional distress. The suit also names her company, Pink Personality. Garrett says he was working as a day to day manager on her Pink Friday 2 tour when things fell apart after her April 2024 show at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit.
According to the lawsuit, Nicki’s head of security called Garrett to her dressing room. Garrett had asked another employee, Luke Montgomery, to pick up her prescriptions while he helped with her quick costume changes. He says Nicki was furious about it and screamed at him in front of about eight members of her team. He says she told him he was “a dead man walking” and that he would “never be anyone.”
Garrett claims Nicki then slapped him with an open hand on the right side of his face, hard enough to knock his hat off. He says she also struck his wrist, sending the papers he was holding to the floor.
Garrett says he locked himself in a bathroom at the arena for hours afterward and was left off the tour bus headed back to Chicago. He says he filed a report with Detroit police before flying home to Los Angeles.
Detroit police later asked the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office for a warrant, but TMZ reported in January 2025 that Nicki would not be charged. Her lawyer at the time said the lawsuit, if it was as TMZ described it, was “completely false and frivolous.” Garrett is seeking unspecified damages.
