Nicki Minaj is retiring, at least according to her Twitter account. She says she wants to start a family. Minaj may be departing from the limelight amid more recent controversies, including an ill-advised collaboration with convicted child pornographer 6ix9ine and an ongoing feud with insurgent rap queen Cardi B. But Nicki’s reign as the queen of rap deserves our respect and a walk down memory lane.
The Trinidadian-born starlet cut her teeth in the outer-borough rap scene of New York City, dropping a number of mixtapes well-received in the rap world until industry kingmaker Lil Wayne discovered her. She appeared on a number of Billboard-ranking singles, but it wasn’t until Minaj performed the single best verse on the single best album of Kanye West’s entire career to date that she exploded into the ranks of not just rap, but musical royalty.
It wasn’t revealed until many years later, but West claims he almost pushed Monster off of 2010’s “My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy” because he feared the track would overshadow the rest of his magnum opus. By the time Minaj dropped her debut album, “Pink Friday,” a month later, she was a superstar in her own right.
She may not have reached the critical stature of Lauryn Hill, but by the numbers, Minaj became the most successful female rapper of all time. She mixed saccharine-sweet, hot-pink wigs and bombastic accents with endless spats with other industry titans. Each album would produce a corporate-plucked anthem and songs so dirty their titles couldn’t be spoken on FM radio. Anaconda, her literotic remix of Baby Got Back, featured her shapely derriere covered by the parental advisory label and flipped the Sir Mix-a-Lot track into a snarling feminist celebration. She was a happy warrior. Until she wasn’t.
Minaj’s persona took a turn from fighting to fuming. She never lost her sharpness, but her snark seemed more sad than passionate. Minaj has previously opened up about her personal losses, from an abortion that “haunted” her to the murder of her cousin, but they never seemed to gnaw at her work. The rap queen spent more than a decade at the top of the charts, including two years in the spotlight during her hotly watched relationship with Meek Mill. She now says she’s engaged to boyfriend Kenneth Petty, a registered sex offender convicted of manslaughter. Maybe Minaj will eventually return to the game, but it’s no surprise why, for better or for worse, she’s ready to call it quits.
