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When it comes to legendary female rappers in the game, Nicki Minaj has to be close to the top of the list. Onika Maraj was born in Trinidad and Tobago. She lived there with her grandmother until the age of five when she moved to South Jamaica, Queens. After graduating from Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts (which focuses on visual and performing arts), Minaj wanted to be an actress. In fact, she was cast cast in the Off-Broadway play
In Case You Forget in 2001. Unfortunately, she struggled with her acting career and worked countless jobs to make money.
After a short stint with Brooklyn group Full Force and another with Brooklyn label Dirty Money Entertainment, Nicki released her first mixtape,
Playtime Is Over on July 5, 2007. Her second and third mixtapes,
Sucka Free and
Beam Me Up Scotty were released the following two years. After being discovered by Lil Wayne, she ended up signing a recording contract with Young Money Entertainment in 2009. She spent the next year murdering her verses on features with artists such as Jay-Z, Robin Thicke, Mariah Carey and Yo Gotti to name a few. The run she went on led up to her releasing her debut studio album
Pink Friday on November 19, 2010. The album debuted at number two and later reached number one on the
Billboard 200, with first-week sales of 375,000 copies. It had the highest sales week for a female rap album this century and second highest sales week overall after Lauryn Hill’s
The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill (1998). Less than a month after its release, it was certified platinum making it the first album by a solo female rapper to go platinum in seven years.
Minaj followed up
Pink Friday with three more album (
Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded (2012),
The Pinkprint (2014) and
Queen (2018). The Queen of Rap as she’s commonly referred to as, has become one of the best-selling music artists, with more than 100 million records sold worldwide. She became the first female artist to have one hundred
Billboard Hot 100 entries and has twenty one top 10 hits on the Hot 100, the most for any female rapper. Over her career, she has amassed eight American Music Awards, five MTV Video Music Awards (including the 2022 Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award), twelve BET Awards, four
Billboard Music Awards, a Brit Award and three Guinness World Records.
Although she hasn’t dropped an album since 2018, Nicki has continued to stay active by releasing her own singles and collaborations. She also never misses an opportunity to give someone else a fire feature verse. Ironically enough, the year after
Queen dropped, Minaj went on a run reminiscent to the one that she had when she first got in the game. Check out a gallery of Nicki Minaj’s verses of 2019!
