Who the F is… Nicki Minaj?
Ok stupid question. Of course you know who she is, or if you don’t recognize her by name, then you’ll recognize her distinctive flow, her crazy Barbie-meets-spaceman style, or maybe her amazing ass.
Onika Tanya Minaj and I share the same birth year, but apart from that our lives differ a lot. While I grew up as a typical Chinese convenience store kid, Nicki grew up in the sunny climes of Trinidad before moving to Queens, NY when she was 5. While my parents shouted at the top of their lungs when they fought, Nicki’s attempted to off one another by attempting to burn the house down! Luckily, Nicki had music to get her through the tough bits.
After graduating from the special performing arts school of La Guardia, Nicki went right to work on establishing herself in the underground hip-hop scene. Her quick-fire raps, feisty attitude, and outrageous alter-egos quickly made her a name in the underground scene and she received the Female Artist of the Year award at the Underground Music Awards in 2008. Soon after, she was wooed by Lil Wayne’s Young Money label and released her first mainstream album, Pink Friday, just this month. Pink Friday was an immediate success and Nicki became not the first hip-hop artist, or the first female artist, but the first artist to have 7 songs on Billboard’s Hot 100 chart simultaneously.
It’s immediately obvious why Nicki is a born star, and why artists like Drake profess their love to her in their songs. She demands attention. Just like the alter-egos of Beyonce Knowles and Eminem, Nicki has created several bold personalities to project as her musical persona. This desire to create a fantasy world has been with Nicki since childhood and was, as she puts it, a way “[t]o get away from all their fighting… I would imagine being a new person. ‘Cookie’ was my first identity—that stayed with me for a while. I went on to ‘Harajuku Barbie’, then ‘Nicki Minaj’. Fantasy was my reality.” Along with these personas, goes the clothes and Nicki has quickly become known for her fantastically colorful wigs and outfits. The girl is obviously a makeup whore and has even recently collaborated with MAC on her own lipstick!
While Nicki may project a fierce personality and trade heated barbs with Lil Kim, she also has a deeper, intellectual side to her. This coming Sunday, November 28, MTV will release a documentary about Nicki called My Time Now. In the documentary, cameras follow Nicki home to Trinidad in the final days of recording her album. With the film, Nicki hopes to show her fans her roots and to inspire others to follow their dreams. Being a role model to her fans, particularly her young female fans, is important to Nicki. Unlike other female hip-hop artists who use their T&A to get ahead, Nicki insisted on using her skills, not her body, and cultivated an image that was more cute and quirky, rather than skanky. Similar to artists like Lady Gaga, style to Nicki is more about expression, than exploitation. That being said, it is nearly impossible to hide the kick-ass body that Nicki has and damn it all – if I had her curves, I would be running around in panties in my videos too!
So if you’re looking for someone new to fill your headphones, then give this funny little “Harajuku Barbie” a spin. She will not disappoint.
