Thursday, September 30, 2010
Saturday, September 25, 2010
Photos: Nylon Magazine
Nylon magazine did a little write-up on Nicki in their new issue, and you can check it out after the jump!
Trinidad-born, New York-raised rapper Nicki Minaj, 25, has dropped guest rhymes on tracks by Jay-Z, Kanye West, Usher, Ludacris, and Sean Kingston. Now she’s finally striking out on her own with her debut album, Pink Friday (due November 23rd). Any girl who drives a pink Lamborghini, has a crew of alter-egos, and dresses like a self-described “Harajuku Barbie” is solid gold in our books.
YOUR PERFORMANCES ARE EXTREMELY THEATRICAL, HAVE YOU ALWAYS BEEN DRAWN TO DRAMA?
Absolutely, I don’t want to do it if it’s not creative. I studied acting for four years, so I definitely bring my acting training into my music and my performance.
DESCRIBE YOUR PERSONAL STYLE.
Kooky, colorful, and cocky.
WHO ARE YOUR INFLUENCES?
Any female rapper that you can think of: I could find something in them that I feel is really, really positive and really connects with me. I definitely looked up to Salt-N-Pepa when I was younger, I love their attitude, I love their facial expressions, I love their wardrobe, I love their voices, I love their records.
HAVE YOU EXPERIENCED ANY CRAZY FANS?
I’ve run into people with tattoos of me or my name on their body – people I’ve never met before in my life. Sometimes as an artist you think, Am I really getting through to people? And I think seeing that reassures me that I am making a mark and that I am connecting.
WHAT’S YOUR CURRENT OBSESSION?
Recently I’ve been wearing these big straw hats. I started wearing them because I was going to an amusement park and it was going to be really sunny and I kind of wanted to be incognito, but they just look so cute. They’re perfect for bad hair days.
WHEN YOU WERE YOUNG, WHAT DID YOU WANT TO BE WHEN YOU GREW UP?
A bus driver, I was eight years old.
WHAT WOULD PEOPLE BE SURPRISED TO KNOW ABOUT YOU?
I like decorating homes. When I moved to L.A. people told me to hire an interior designer and I just refused to. Right now I’m going for an all-white theme so it looks like you just stepped into a scene from The Matrix. I should be walking around in a trench coat and you should be calling me Trinity.
Thursday, September 23, 2010
Music: "Young Money Salute"
Check out one of Nicki's contributions to Lil Wayne's upcoming album on this track, which was actually recorded before Mr. Carter's incarceration.
Wednesday, September 22, 2010
The Importance Of Being Nicki
The DePaulia published on article on our HB today. Give it a read below.
Nicki Minaj is one of the strangest, yet most creative hip-hop artists that we've seen in years. "All these haters mad because I'm so established," Nicki Minaj boasts on her current single "Check it Out", which anyone would say after getting support from Lil Wayne. With her outrageous attitude and daring rhymes, Minaj is promoting a change to the way we look at hip-hop artists.
She has multiple alter-egos and often speaks in a British accent. She changes her brightly-colored wigs frequently and pops her eyes out of her head while rapping, but Minaj is more than an erratic artist. She is the key to the future of rap, daring to be different by giving physical life to her raps and backing it up with clever wordplay and delivery.
Lil Wayne discovered her in 2008 and guided her through recording her now infamous mixtape, Beam Me Up, Scotty. Fast-forward two years and Minaj is all over the radio, doing 13 high profile features in the last year and making countless mixtape appearances.
Similar to her label-mate Drake, Minaj has gained her fame by being featured in songs with popular artists.
Her hard work quickly paid off, with Minaj landing multiple magazine covers, three BET awards and a VMA nomination- all of this without dropping an album. Her rise to popularity has sparked an interest in female rap again, which makes one wonder, can Minaj revive rapping for females?
Minaj separates herself with her personality. There is no rapper out there that gives life to his or her music the way she does. It is rare that Minaj raps straightforwardly; her verses are always sprinkled with accents, voices and topics that rappers typically don't use.
Not only is Minaj breaking the stereotype of a female rapper, but of all rappers in general. She is proving that the negative preconceptions of female rappers shouldn't exist by delivering verses that cannot be compared to anyone, either male or female.
Her recent feature, "Monster", which included Kanye West, Rick Ross, Jay-Z and the unlikely partner Bon Iver, proved that she could not only hold her own, but coud teach her fellow rappers a few things about wordplay and vocal delivery.
Her fearless attitude is proving that a rapper can be successful without trying to sound tough. Rap is about expression, not stereotypes. Minaj is literally breaking down the typecast of the sex-filled female rapper with every feature she does. By daring to be different and breaking the mold, she is not reviving rap, but causing a change in the genre. Rap can be more than sex and drugs- it can have personality.
Nicki Minaj is just beginning to take over the rap world, and when her album Pink Friday drops on November 23, she will prove herself worthy of the change that she is triggering.
Monday, September 20, 2010
Photos/Video: Making Minaj
Discovered by Lil Wayne on a street DVD, Nicki Minaj enjoyed an early buzz that, while strong, hinged on a common archetype: a female rapper who wasn't hard to look at. But after a year in which the 26-year-old Queens native, born Onika Tanya Maraj, contributed sexually explicit and surprisingly self-aware verses for a slew of Young Money bangers ("Bedrock," "Up All Night," and "Roger That") and became the go-to gal for Usher ("Lil Freak"), Robin Thicke ("Shakin' It 4 Daddy"), Ludacris ("My Chick Bad"), and Mariah Carey ("Up Out My Face"), she transcended hood-ornament status to be one of the hottest rappers in the game, period.
Her penchant for animated accents and a Harajuku-influenced love for colorful getups begat a cult of personality so strong that even a big-budget disaster like her poorly received first single, "Massive Attack," couldn't hold her down. Nicki simply licked her wounds (if only we had been there to help) and came back with the sweet and sultry "Your Love," which became the first female single to top the Billboard rap charts in eight years. With her debut, Pink Friday, due in November, we'll soon have a clearer view of which Nicki will be remembered. But whether mold-shattering superstar or Young Money footnote, one thing is clear: She'll be the one calling the shots.
Complex: Everyone has this image of you as a cartoon character with outlandish wigs, but at our shoot today you were much more low-key.
[Laughs.] Every woman is a character—but people need to see I'm a regular human. It's like you wear a pink wig and you're no longer human all of sudden. You're a thing. Like today [the photographer] was like, "Where is that Nicki Minaj smile?" But this shoot doesn't call for the Nicki Minaj smile. You guys wanted me subdued, so I'm gonna give you a different side. I'm not gonna pull a string and be like, "It's Barbie, bitch!"
Is it intimidating to know that, besides The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill, there are very few indisputable classic female rap albums?
I want to do well, but I don't think I'm intimidated. People's expectations of what I'm capable of doing are very low. People have been used to hearing little one-liners and me play around.
You think people still underestimate you, even with the success you've been having?
Absolutely. A lot of people don't know I wrote all the hooks on the album. I arranged the music, did the transitions. [Other female rappers] are told what to do, but I run my entire empire; I don't think people would expect that.
Was it hard for you to get that latitude from the label?
My generation is creative; all we need is a Baby or a Slim to back us. We don't need you to tell us what to do, but we need you to nurture our decisions, and I think Cash Money understands that. I didn't have Wayne obviously, since he's been in jail, so there wasn't anyone I could have called and asked for help. Actually, when I've relied on people in the past is when I've made the biggest mistakes. When I trust my gut, I win.
What are some of your biggest mistakes?
I won't say.
Were they recent mistakes?
Yeah.
Recent as in "Massive Attack"?
[Laughs.] Next question.
What has Wayne's involvement been on the album?
He really hasn't had any involvement on it. But to be honest, the album doesn't sound like Wayne. I mean, he's my biggest influence, but it doesn't sound like Wayne's stuff. It sounds like Nicki.
You have the smash single "Your Love" out right now. When did you record it?
Two years ago, before I dropped Beam Me Up Scotty. I loved the beat and the hook, but I didn't like my delivery on it; that's why I re-recorded it when it leaked. [Before it leaked] I was like, "This is going in the trash."
When you look at the two singles you've had so far, "Massive Attack" is more experimental and "Your Love" is more conventional. Does it bother you that people were less receptive to something different?
It was a good lesson to learn early on. I actually think the public made the right choice.
What was the lesson?
To just go with my heart and my first instinct.
So your first instinct wasn't "Massive Attack"?
You're making it seem that way. I didn't say anything.
It's just the way you looked down...
Why are you looking at my eyes?
Should I look somewhere else? I don't want you to slap me.
[Laughs.] I don't want you to read into my eyes, just listen to what I am saying. When I first heard ["Your Love"], I loved it; I played it for Wayne and he yelled at me. When we were working on Young Money's album, I played him just the hook and the beat. He can't remember it, though. To this day, he's like, "Nah, I ain't never heard that." But he heard it and was like, "What the fuck is this?" I think that's one of the reasons I fell back on it.
Where do all your different voices come from?
I have no idea. I think Wayne kind of influenced that. He has always been really carefree when he raps and I was like, "I don't have to stay in one cadence or stay in one tone when I rap—I can just do what I want."
But you've been saying in recent interviews that you might tone down the voices.
Sometimes the shit I say is over people's heads and I feel like I need to dumb it down a bit so people can understand it. I think if I had said a lot of raps in a particular voice, people would go, "Yo, that shit was hard"—but when you change up your voice a little bit, they can't see past that. And they're lookin' at me like, "This bitch is stupid"—and I'm lookin' at them like, "No, bitch, you're stupid." [Laughs.]
So on your album and going forward, you're going to mellow out on the voices?
I definitely made a conscious effort to tone the voices down a little bit.
Did the label or management talk to you about it at all?
Again, I run my empire. Does that answer your question? No one tells me anything unless I ask their opinion. No one can make a decision for you. Not if you're the boss.
How have you gone from being a hot mixtape rapper to possibly the next pop culture icon?
It's interesting that you say that, but I still can't believe that happened. I'm not gonna sit up here and act like I have a dope answer. I don't know how that happened, and I don't know why it happened, but I'm just happy that girls who look like Nicki Minaj can now have a face in pop culture.
The successful female rappers that have come before you each had a strong male counterpart. How do you make sure people don't say Lil Wayne is pulling the strings on your career?
I always keep Nicki Minaj separate from Young Money. I allow Wayne to call the shots when we do group albums, but when I do other things and have other choices, I don't necessarily need everyone's go-ahead. I write my own raps, I go in the studio by myself. There are some female rappers who can't go in the studio unless they have a ghostwriter sitting right next to them. I'm the complete opposite—I'll go in and ghostwrite for someone.
It seems like Young Money as a whole doesn't get caught up in beef. Has Wayne sat you or Drake down and advised you to avoid that route?
He's definitely told me, "Yo, leave that bullshit alone. That's for people who ain't got shit else to do." I've watched Wayne handle himself so well. I've seen people take shot after shot after shot at him and if it fazed him, I never saw it. People take shots because they're hoping for a little bit of your energy. They need fuel.
How hard has it been not to respond when people take shots?
It's not hard when you're making a lot of money and everything you do is sold out, and people adore you and little kids are crying just to take a picture with you. I'm laughing all the way to the bank, just like Wayne said. Young Money is good.
Speaking of Young Money, did your labelmate Drake tell you he'd be mentioning wanting to marry you on his verse for "Miss Me" before you heard it?
He told me he said something about me on a verse, but I didn't think it would be anything like that. He let me hear it for the first time when we did Jay's show at Madison Square Garden, the day before Wayne had to go to jail—that night he let me hear it on the headphones. But you know what else he told me he wrote for me? The Alicia Keys song "I'm Ready." I happen to love the song. I never told anyone that, I hope he won't get mad that I said that.
Then you have Wayne calling you his future wife.
[Laughs.]
You're gonna have Drake and Wayne fighting over you.
You have no idea how much I love them. We joke around. That's the thing about Young Money, we will say a lot of crazy shit in the press but we will get around each other and start cracking up laughing like brothers and sisters. Drake is a playboy. He probably told mad bitches he wrote them songs for 'em.
Do the guys in Young Money ask you for dating advice?
They always ask me to hook them up with something!
Drake asks you to hook him up with chicks?
Well, no, Drake knows better. [Laughs.] Drake tries to be the suave dude and not seem pressed, but Wayne will straight-up ask: "Nick, you got something for me?"
There's been a lot of speculation about your sexuality in the press. Your verse on Usher's "Lil' Freak" adds to the buzz that you're bisexual.
When I rap, it's just an extension of how I speak, and that's how I talk. If you don't like it, don't listen. I'm also not going to explain something just because I said it in a rap. Take what you want from it. [In the press] I didn't say [I don't like women]. I said I don't have sex with women. I don't have sex with men right now either. If [bisexual is] what they wanna call me, then fine.
So right now Nicki Minaj is celibate?
Yes, and I encourage all my young Barbies to do the same. I just don't have time.
Sex doesn't take that long, I can tell you that right now. I'm talking seven minutes—and that includes foreplay.
[Laughs.] Oh my God! Maybe it's because we don't need that physical stimulation all the time. I can just have a daydream and it does it for me.
Or maybe it's the Rabbit.
[Laughs.] What?
That vibrator is making men obsolete.
No, I don't got no damn Rabbit, you lunatic.
You know, you kinda put Diddy and Cassie out there on "Lil' Freak."
How did I put them out there?
They never speak in the press about being together, and you say, "I'm plotting on how I can take Cassie away from Diddy."
Oh! Did I do that? [Laughs.] Sorry.
I saw a video interview where you said you wanted to have a threesome with Cassie and Lauren London. What is it about Cassie that you love so much?
She's so peaceful and serene. There's something about her that is so effortless. She's my friend on BBM.
How did your relationship with Diddy start? Obviously, he manages you now...
Who said that? Who told you that? Did I tell you that? I don't want you to say "obviously" if I didn't tell you that, so let's start that question over.
OK: It has been reported that Diddy and James Cruz manage you now—so how did that relationship start?
I don't care to discuss management and don't care to discuss Diddy any further.
Moving on, then: You're one of the few female rappers I've heard saying "pause" and "no homo" on your songs.
[Laughs.] I stopped saying "no homo" because a gay person said I was perpetuating homophobia, so I accepted that. I was just so used to being around my boys and them saying, "no homo," it's like second nature. With "pause," it just means no sexual connotation intended. A guy can say "pause" to a girl and vice versa.
You've said in recent interviews that you want to tone down the sexual content in your music. What prompted that?
On "My Chick Bad," I had to show people that I can spit a verse without sex or talking about how good I look. I'm actually timid when it comes to being overtly sexy, which is weird because in the beginning people thought of me like some freakin' porn star. Guys reference sex all the time in their raps—I can't even think of a record where Wayne doesn't talk about sex—but when a female does it, people start tuning out. Then this gay dude the other day told me, "I say to dudes, ‘Maybe it's time to put this pussy on your sideburns.'" I was crying laughing and I was like, "I can't take this shit out of my act." People live for that shit. [Laughs.] I just have to balance it a little bit.
Saturday, September 18, 2010
Video: Nicki Backstage At VMAs
See what Nicki had to say about her Pre-show performance and her ex-Twitter-husband Drake...
Tuesday, September 14, 2010
Video: Nicki Perfoms "Monster" @ Yankee Stadium
Photos/Video: The Curious Case Of Nicki Minaj
Out Magazine's Tastemakers Issue features our favorite cover girl.
Nicki Minaj is a 25-year-old rapper from Queens, New York, with a wickedly clever flow and never-ending supply of pop culture punch lines. Except when she’s Roman Zolanski, her gay male alter ego, who spits saucy verses at warp speed. Or the character Nicki Lewinsky, who cozies up to President Carter -- better known as superstar rapper Lil Wayne -- on a handful of salacious mix tape tracks. She raps about signing her fans’ boobs in a bugged-out Valley girl accent. She’s the first female hip-hop artist to hit number 1 on Billboard’s top rap singles chart since 2003. She’s stolen the spotlight on songs with pop heavyweights Mariah Carey and Usher. And she’s done it all while playing hip-hop’s most dangerous game: sexuality roulette.
Minaj may or may not be attracted to women (more on that later), but she draws a fierce gay following with her brazen lyrics and outsize persona. Beneath her blunt-cut bangs lies a cunning mind capable of weaving sports metaphors and references to ’80s sitcoms into complex rhymes about scoring with girls and blowing guys’ minds. Lady Gaga’s audience was primed to accept her as a sexually adventurous nonconformist by artists like Madonna and David Bowie, but in hip-hop, Nicki Minaj is a real space oddity. Rap has never seen a mainstream rising star this eccentric and brave, yet for all Minaj’s curious artistic choices (two-tone wigs, spontaneous British dialects, shout-outs to Harry Potter) she’s also incredibly popular. She has nearly 1.1 million Twitter followers and a cadre of famous fans like Kanye West, who recently proclaimed she could be the second-biggest rapper of all time, behind Eminem. When her first official album, Pink Friday, arrives in November, Minaj won’t just be the “baddest bitch,” as she calls herself -- she’ll be a bona fide phenomenon.
Three years ago, Minaj was an unknown from 50 Cent’s neighborhood trying to get noticed on MySpace. Her mom had filled her childhood home with music (“I knew the whole Diana Ross collection before I was 8,” she says), but her father introduced her to violence. On the 2008 track “Autobiography,” she raps about how her drug-addicted dad tried to burn down the family’s house with her mom still inside. Despite the turmoil -- or perhaps because of it -- young Nicki was passionately creative. She wrote her first rhyme before she turned 12 (“Cookie’s the name, chocolate chip is the flavor / Suck up my style like a cherry Life Saver”) and attended LaGuardia High School, the arts academy immortalized in Fame, where she studied drama and generated plenty of it.
“I was definitely one of those girls where you heard me before you saw me,” Minaj recalls, kicking off a pair of velvety platform heels in a tidy Los Angeles hotel suite and stretching out her calves, which are tightly wrapped in black leather leggings. She pondered careers as a bus driver or lawyer and worked a day job at Red Lobster saving up money for studio time. When she started to get serious about music, her then-manager recommended she change her name to Minaj (she was born Onika Maraj). Though she now admits she hated it, she obliged, tarting up her image for her first mix tape, 2007’s Playtime Is Over, which opens with a sex line call to 1-900-MS-MINAJ. After she skillfully remade the Notorious B.I.G.’s “Warning” for the DVD documentary The Come Up, she got a call from Lil Wayne. Over the course of two more mix tapes under his supervision, 2008’s Sucka Free and 2009’s Beam Me Up Scotty, she developed ferocious new identities, penned jaw-dropping explicit raps, and emerged as the first lady of Wayne’s Young Money crew. She also started to fend off pervy guys stalking her online by playing to her female fans.
“I started making it my business to say things that would empower women, like, ‘Where my bad bitches at?’ to let them know, ‘I’m here for you,’ ” she says. “Then, when I started going to the shows and it was nothing but girls, it was like, Did I go too far with embracing my girls? Because now they want to kiss and hug me.
Minaj may have encouraged all the lady love with lyrics that imply she’s sexually flexible -- or at least curious. None of the famous female rappers rumored to be queer have dared utter the L word, but Minaj has used it repeatedly: “I only stop for pedestrians or a real, real bad lesbian,” she raps on “Go Hard.” On Usher’s “Lil Freak” she trolls the club for a chick with “a real big ol’ ghetto booty” for a ménage à trois, and in the song’s video, which has been viewed more than four million times on YouTube, she spends more time rubbing up on a female conquest than she does with its star.
The rhymes brought attention, then rumors, then a denial in the July issue of Black Men magazine that reads remarkably like Bill Clinton’s infamous “I did not have sexual relations with that woman” statement: “I don’t date women and I don’t have sex with women.” Nicki Lewinsky laughs at the resemblance and adds almost tauntingly, “But I don’t date men either.” Her bottom line: No labels. “People who like me -- they’ll listen to my music, and they’ll know who I am. I just don’t like that people want you to say what you are, who you are. I just am. I do what the fuck I want to do.” She likes to beckon ladies to the stage at her shows, brandishing a marker for sweaty boob-signing sessions, but 95% of her racy lyrics are about encounters with men. Adding that she’ll grab her best friend’s breasts for fun far from paparazzi cameras, she says, “The point is, everyone is not black and white. There are so many shades in the middle, and you’ve got to let people feel comfortable with saying what they want to say when they want to say it. I don’t want to feel like I’ve got the gun pointed at my head and you’re about to pull the trigger if I don’t say what you want to hear. I just want to be me and do me.”
Minaj definitely has a lot to say about the politics of being a woman in the 21st-century music biz. “Everybody knows I can go out and pick a dude and date him,” she says. “But I want to do what people think I can’t do, which is have the number 1 album in the country and be the first female rapper to sell records like dudes in this day and age.” After taking some heat for identifying with one of the best-selling, and most disproportioned, toys in history—she ends phone calls with a screeched “It’s Barbie, bitch!” -- she was accused of being plastic. “It’s interesting that people have more negative things to say about me saying ‘I’m Barbie’ than me saying ‘I’m a bad bitch,’ ” she says, getting a bit heated. “So you can call yourself a female dog because that’s cool in our community. But if you call yourself a Barbie, that’s fake.” The criticism didn’t just irk her; it inspired her. “Once I figure something is irritating people, I’m going to do it more,” she says, smiling, “because I like to get on your nerves until you realize how fucking stupid you are.”
If girls are attracted to Minaj’s unapologetic feminism and appreciation for the female body (not to mention her own überhot photo shoots), gay guys can’t get enough of her over-the-top wardrobe, neck-snapping put-downs, and theatrical play-acting. Hip-hop has always had a flair for the dramatic, from Flavor Flav’s oversize clock to the comedic skits tucked between tracks on Wu-Tang Clan and Snoop Dogg albums. But Minaj has taken the art to the next level with her drag-queen-like outfits (she’s rocked Wonder Woman spandex and Freddy Krueger nails), wild-eyed rapping, and split personalities. “Roman is so flamboyant, so outspoken, so open, and, you know, creative,” she says of her inner gay boy Zolanski, which she pronounces “Zo-lan-sky” with a touch of an East End accent. The name is, of course, a play on director Roman Polanski, but she can’t explain why she opted to identify with a white man known for being a deviant. Screwing with sexual conventions has become a Minaj trademark, though: In her guest spot on Mariah Carey’s “Up Out My Face” she calls out a cheating boyfriend who wasn’t just two-timing her with another girl -- he was “sneakin’ with the deacon.”
As for her increasingly elaborate looks, Minaj insists, “No one would even have had the balls before to suggest things like my hair.” She appears in Ludacris’s “My Chick Bad” video with a pin stuck in her pink do, jet-black lipstick, and spikes on her shoulders. She sports a half-pink, half-blonde wig in the clip for Young Money’s “Roger That” because her stylist “hadn’t dyed one half of the wig yet, and I really wanted to wear it.” Though she didn’t realize it, these bold choices paired with her frank sex talk were making Minaj an underground gay heroine. She first learned of her gay male following when she spied fans’ spot-on renditions of her verses on the Web. She was blown away by the replications of her voices and mannerisms. “If a gay guy impersonates you, you are a bad bitch. Period,” she says, waving her bright-orange nails in the air. “There are no ifs, ands, or buts, because they only impersonate the best.”
Hip-hop, however, has never been a hospitable place for gays, especially gay men. Female rappers including Lady Sovereign and Yo! Majesty’s Shunda K have revealed they’re queer to little fanfare, but the biggest names in the game wouldn’t dare broach the subject. “I think there have been many gay rappers, they just haven’t come out of the closet,” Minaj says slyly. “Yup, lots of them. They’re lurking around the industry now.” While she believes we’ll see a blockbuster gay rapper fess up soon, Minaj acknowledges it won’t be an easy road. “Obviously, the majority of the men in hip-hop don’t want you to think they’re gay. That’s just the reality of it,” Minaj says. “I’m a woman, so I have a lot more flexibility. And I don’t lose credibility in any way if I say I think girls are dope and sexy.”
Saying girls are sexy and actually having sex with them are very different things, though, putting Minaj at risk of being labeled a “fauxmosexual” -- someone who uses gay titillation to score pop culture points, like girl-kissing Katy Perry or muffin-bluffing Lady Gaga. While it’s clear Minaj enjoys the attention she gets from both men and women for flirting with ladies -- she licked her lips suggestively and batted her eyelashes when a female fan announced she wanted to kiss her on a recent Ustream webcast -- because she’s a hip-hop artist, she’s gambling with her career, and the stakes are high.
“I still don’t think hip-hop has any place for gay people,” says New York City gay rapper Cazwell. Shunda K adds, “There are a lot of people in the industry fakin’ it to make it. When you’re not keeping it real, you can be any damn thing people want you to be.” But Cazwell thinks Minaj could go to number 1 even if she had a sudden public revelation about her sexuality. “If she was butch and dressed like a guy, people would be turned off, but people like a pretty girl no matter who she sleeps with,” he says. “It may even turn them on more!”
There may be no out MCs selling platinum records at the moment, but as rap has aged, it has moved further from the homophobic battleground where pink F bombs once reigned supreme. Nowadays, comments that could be perceived as gay in hip-hop songs are appended with the somewhat lighthearted phrase “no homo.” Minaj used to say it, too, but traded it in for the less prejudicial “pause” after a gay male fan complained to her via Twitter.
“‘Pause’ means ‘no sexual connotation intended,’” she explains, inadvertently demonstrating the proper usage when at one point she responds to a question about planning her upcoming tour with “I’m so freaking, like, anal about every single thing, pause. So it’s going to be freaking crazy.”
Minaj’s craziness is a big part of her appeal, but as she makes the leap from street records to the mainstream, she risks losing some of the sharp edges that have become her hallmarks. She’s toned down her most pornographic lyrics (“I feel like I’ve been there, done that”), and her chart-topping single “Your Love” is a gooey R&B ballad in which she sings, “You got spark, you, you got spunk, you / You got something all the girls want.” Says Jayson Rodriguez, a hip-hop writer for MTV News, “ ‘Your Love’ is tame and muted, and she’s anything but. Nicki Minaj is saucy, lyrical, animated, flirtatious, beautiful, smart -- but she doesn’t have a signature song that matches up to that yet. It feels like she’ll explode once she gets that massive song that people identify with her on a mainstream level, but sometimes I fear she can’t capture her persona on record.”
But Minaj is already prepared to bring her gay fans with her to the next level. Musing about hitting the road with her mentor, Lil Wayne, once he’s out of jail, she says, “Normally, Wayne probably wouldn’t have gay guys coming to see his shows much, but they’re definitely a big part of my movement, and I hope they’d still come out and see me.” She reveals that Wayne loves discussing how much ladies love her, and that the crew jokes with him, “Nicki’s gonna steal all your girls on tour this year!” She laughs and flashes one of her mischievous smiles that make the boys -- and girls -- swoon. “I think that will be really, really interesting, just to start bridging that gap. We’ll see.”
Monday, September 13, 2010
Video: Nicki Presents VMA For Best Male Video
In case you missed it, Nicki and Katy Perry presented Eminem's award for Best Male Video...
Sunday, September 12, 2010
Friday, September 10, 2010
Video: Behind The Scenes of Out Magazine Shoot
Tuesday, September 7, 2010
Nicki Nominated For 4 BET Hip-Hop Awards
Nicki has been nominated for four awards at this year's BET Hip-Hop Awards. The categories are Lyricist of the Year, Rookie of the Year, Hustler of the Year, and the Made You Look award for her fashion sense. The show airs October 12th at 8pm EST.
The Many Voices Of Barbie
Check out MTV's review of our Nicki's many personalities...
Even when she’s the only person on a track, Nicki Minaj can turn a song into a posse cut with her personalities. Her role-playing delivery transforms the female MC into a one-woman show. While some rappers struggle with finding one voice, Nicki Minaj aka Nicki Lewinski aka Nicki the Boss aka Nicki the Ninja aka Nicki the Harajuku Barbie has many to work with.
Yesterday, MTV News announced the Ms. Minaj will deliver her first-ever televised solo performance during the 2010 VMA pre-show on Sunday, September 12, she taken another huge step.
We’ve compiled our own dictionary of five signature Nicki voices that we’ve grown to know and love. We know that Nicki slides through all of these personalities in most songs these days, but we’ve grabbed the moments where each Barbie style is magnified.
Harajuku Barbie: A combination of the New York City gum-snapping slick-talking Nicki and the hair-twirling lollipop licking Barbie with multicolored wigs. Check out Nicki’s collab with Mariah Carey “Up Out My Face”, including the video where Nicki gives a pageant wave to the camera and twirls her hair as she demands, “Elevator, press P for the Penthouse.”
Dutty Wine Barbie: Nicki Minaj grabs hold of her Trini roots to free flow with an urbane patois like she came from Rasta royalty. In her duet with Gyptian for the “Hold Yuh” remix, Nicki Minaj could pass for Lady Saw while she glides over lines like “Body smokin’…cigarette” and “All I do is sign boobs and be takin’ pics. Got the new Benz the color of bacon bits.”
Small Wonder Barbie: That girlish flow that still sounds somewhat robotic (like Vicky the Robot from the 80s sitcom “Small Wonder”). The pinnacle of Nicki Minaj robotics are on the Rihanna reference track “Saxon”, where Minaj sounds like a fembot returning to outer space as she says, “I am ga-going home. I am ga-going home.”
Posh Barbie: When Nicki Minaj rhymes in an aristocratic British accent. All she needs is to marry a footballer (read: soccer player) from the UK and she’s well on her way to lyrical London. On J. Holiday’s “Take It Off” with Lloyd, Nicki Minaj rhymes like she’s sipping tea and eating crumpets stating, “You need a feature, daddy. Give me my Peter Pen. When I hit the club it’ll be me and my conceited friend.”
Godzilla Barbie: One moment she’s being cheeky and giggling and then erupts into a monster growl. Big voice for a little Barbie. Nicki Minaj has had two big Godzilla moments: on Ludacris’ “My Chick Bad” where she goes from a Mean Girl snapping “Now all these bitches wanna try and be my besty” to comparing herself to Freddy Krueger and Jason Voorhees. Then on the aptly titled “Monster”, Nicki rhymes through all of her voices and ends with shriek and a growl that she’s a “motherf*ckin’ monster”. Indeed Minaj is.
Saturday, September 4, 2010
Music: "Check It Out" f Will.I.Am (Updated)
::Download Here::
(Updated with official iTunes release)
(Updated with official iTunes release)
Friday, September 3, 2010
VMAs Are The Pinnacle Of Nicki's Career
Check out what the Nickster had to say while on set for her VMA promo.
Thursday, September 2, 2010
Video: Nicki's New VMA Promo
Photos: Paper Magazine
Miss Nicki is gracing the pages of the new Paper Magazine. Check out the pics as well as scans of the article here.
Wednesday, September 1, 2010
Nicki Is Sure 'Pink Friday' Will Be a Success
Rap-Up.com (and later, MTV News) wrote up this synopsis of Nicki's recent interview with V103.
With the recent deficit of femcees in the game, the future of females in hip-hop depends on the success of Nicki Minaj’s debut album Pink Friday. The Young Money starlet spoke with V103’s Greg Street about how important it is for her album to succeed, and hopes that it will encourage more ladies to pick up the mic.
“They won’t look to sign other female rappers because they’ll say, ‘Her buzz was so crazy and if she couldn’t do it, then no one can do it.’ And I don’t want that to happen, so I’m doing this as well for all the girls,” explained the “Your Love” hitmaker. “I hope that with the success of the album—because I know it will be successful, I believe it will be successful—I hope that this opens doors for all of the girls everywhere.”
She also shared that she was initially scared to be a solo artist after associates warned her that female rap was over and that record companies wouldn’t give her proper support. “Even as far as I’ve come right now, it’s a testament in my mind,” she said. “So I hope the female rappers will understand how big it is, just for our culture, that the album does well.”
In addition, Nicki spoke about her excitement regarding Lil Wayne’s November release from jail, and that his absence has made her realize how important he is to the Young Money family. “He didn’t deserve to go in in the first place, and it’s kind of crazy how much of a void it’s been without him,” she stated. “We really didn’t realize that Wayne is the glue that holds Young Money and Cash Money together, I feel, so I’m just very thankful that he’s finally coming home.”
Pink Friday is slated for a November 23 release, and is expected to include contributions from will.i.am, Swizz Beatz, and Alex Da Kid.
And from MTV News...
Nicki Minaj has a lot to be excited about these days. Not only is the Young Money MC gearing up for the release of her debut album in November, she's also featured on a new track with Jay-Z and Kanye West and celebrated a Twitter marriage (and divorce) with Drake.
But while the animated rapper remains busy, she is also anticipating Lil Wayne's release from prison. In a recent radio interview, Minaj spoke about her mentor and why she feels the need to make Pink Friday a success.
"Can you only imagine what he's been holding and what's building up in that brain?" Minaj asked Greg Street of Atlanta radio station V-103. "I'm afraid for anybody ... any of his competition when he gets out, because I just feel like it's going to be monumental. He's in a great state. When I speak to him, he sounds like he has some sort of clear understanding of everything now, almost like he's had some weird sort of epiphany since he's been there, so I'm sure his stuff is only going to get better."
When Lil Wayne left for prison, Minaj realized just how much he meant to his rap crew. "He didn't deserve to go in the first place, and it's kind of crazy how much of a void it's been without him," she said. "We didn't realize Wayne is really the glue that holds Young Money and Cash Money together, I feel. I'm just very, very thankful that he's finally coming home."
The 25-year-old MC is ready for the whole Young Money crew to take over the rap game. "We're just really, really hard workers, and you know what? At some point, I would hope the hard work pays off, at least on my end," she said. "It's definitely already paid off for Wayne and for Drake, so I want to thank everybody for supporting Young Money, period."
So what happens if the New York native falters with her debut album? "They won't look to sign other female rappers if the project doesn't do well, because they're going to say, 'Well, her buzz was so crazy, and if she couldn't do it, then no one can do it,' and I don't want that to happen. So I'm doing this as well for all the girls."
The Young Money darling is staying positive as she hopes to pave the way for the females to come in the rap game. "I hope it will open doors for all girls everywhere who ever wanted to pick up a mic and rap and who have been kind of afraid to do it," she said. "For a long time in my life, I was afraid to be a solo female rapper, because everyone told me, 'It doesn't work. It's not going to happen. Record companies are never going to invest in you just to get it. Just be part of a group.' "
Nonetheless, Minaj values her pre-album success, saying, "Even as far as I've come now is already a testament in my mind, so I hope the female rappers understand how big it is for our culture that the album does well."
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