Couple things, since you seem like a Nicki fan.
Back in 2009, Nicki bailed on all of her studio payments at The Cutting Room. Fendi stopped dropping by, and when the engineers started reaching out to him, they couldn't get in contact with dude anymore. Later on, we all found out she signed to Cash Money/Young Money/Universal. I was in there at the time working with a lot of the Universal and Def Jam artists. TCR ended up suing Nicki and the label. The response from UMG was that Nicki had signed a "multi-rights" deal with them, so they weren't responsible for any debts she "incurred" away from their advances to her, until she had recouped the money they hit her with at signing. They were in court for years for this. In 2014, years later, when Nicki did the little spot in the The Other Woman movie, UMG collected on her pay from the film, and finally settled with TCR for what was invoiced and owed.
For the people not in the music business, "multi-rights" deals are what labels call 360's. Secondly, labels don’t pay sh*t until they get everything back from you. The artist doesn't get a cent, until they get everything back. So it took her 5 years to recoup her advance from UMG, for them to cover her legal debt. 5 years later, which would later come out of her second advance. This is why she's still inked to Young Money. Wayne sold her masters to UMG, and they shifted her deal to Republic, which is still UMG!!
She's going to say she's not in a 360 because they all say that. But to this day, her original deal is still intact. I know this because Wendy Goldstein is running sh*t over there now, and I've known her since my days of working with The Roots and Mos Def. I met them through her. So when you heard Birdman saying sh*t like, "Nicki ain't going nowhere", this is what he means by that. Artists always want to look like bosses because they get embarrassed about sh*t they signed years ago. But anyone that's actually worked with these people and had to harass their labels for payment, would tell you that these labels will tell you everything you need to know on why your check isn't in the mail yet when you're dealing with an artist that's in a 360.
Those are the facts.