Meek Mill is at the center of hip-hop right now, for both good reasons and bad reasons.

While he’s tangled up in his brewing beef with Drake, the Philly emcee is still riding high off of his number 1 album Dreams Worth More Than Money, and is also performing alongside his girlfriend Nicki Minaj for her star-filled lineup on The Pinkprint tour. While the beef with Drizzy is certainly taking up the bulk of the headlines, Meek has a lot of things to talk about and has finally opened up to Billboard on a slew of things — unfortunately none of which relate to Drake.

In an exclusive sit down with the magazine, Meek dished on his high-profile relationship with Nicki and the flack that he’s been getting from the likes of Joe Budden, who criticized the Dreamchaser for being “too affectionate” and swaying away from his “gangster persona.” While many things could be said about that, Meek simply states, “You can’t be hard all the time, man. What’s wrong with it? Jay Z was a street rapper and he had a girlfriend.”

Speaking more in-depthly about his relationship with Nicki, Meek makes it clear that having a private relationship is a task in its own and just like any other couple, they do have arguments — though Meek and Nicki’s happen in the studio. “She wanted [“All Eyes On You”] to be my single, and I didn’t. It turned into an ego argument. She killed me on that song, but I don’t really care. When my girl do better than me, I still win. When I do better than her, she still wins.”

The full cover story will appear on Billboard on August 8th, but until then read more from Meek’s interview here.