"Doesn't matter if you're a man or woman." She's spoken out about sexism, even publicly scolding male rappers like Kendrick Lamar for their double standards towards women.
"I feel that I am doing everything the boys can and have done, plus more," she told The Guardian in 2010. Hip-hop often differentiates - and more accurately, disqualifies - women as "female rappers," somehow subpar to men, but Minaj sees herself beyond categorization. "Jay said, 'When u got so nice?' I said: 'I been nice' Ha!" She adds that Jay-Z was taken equally taken aback by her skills. "I fought u every step of the way but it worked out," she shared on Instagram. Kanye West, Jay Z and Rick Ross learned this valuable lesson on 2010's "Monster": "Pull up in the monster, automobile gangsta/With a bad b**** that came from Sri Lanka/Yeah I'm in that Tonka, color of Willy Wonka/You could be the king but watch the queen conquer," she launches her verse, completely overshadowing the other rappers.Īccording to Minaj, West feared that the rookie would be the show-stealer (she was), and she had to convince him to keep the song on his album, My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Conventional wisdom dictates that a guest verse from Minaj may mean relinquishing the entire track to her. Her silver tongue and flair for the witty and dramatic make for verses you play on repeat just to catch the double, triple entendres. She vacillates seamlessly between rap and singing - a nod to her training at New York City's LaGuardia High School of Music and Art and Performing Arts - and is as comfortable exchanging bars with Ariana Grande or Beyoncé as she is going head-to-head with Drake and Lil Wayne. Her lyrical prowess and razor-sharp flow is undeniable. Now that she has it, she isn't going to relinquish it to anyone - male or female - gunning for that title. The tenacity and hunger from the stairwell continues at the top of hip-hop. Amid her many incarnations, that insatiable appetite to be the best hasn't changed. Minaj has indelibly changed the landscape for artists in hip-hop for the past decade, showing a complex visage: the ferocious emcee ("Monster," "Itty Bitty Piggy") who's just as comfortable being the girl-next-door ("Right Thru Me"), glammed-up Barbie doll or rambunctious alter-ego Roman Zolanski. In a genre where men dominate the uppermost echelon - and only one woman usually flourishes at a time - the top is a lonely place.
I'm the best b**** doing it, doing it," she raps on the aptly-titled "I'm The Best" from her 2010 debut Pink Friday. "I hear they comin' for me because the top is lonely. "Y'all b****** better sharpen your number 2 pencils 'cause I stay on point." That combination - of confidence, skill and élan - has been her calling card since. In her most famous clip, Minaj freestyles from the stairwell while flashing a wad of cash from her luxury handbag.
"When I come through, I do it f****** big!" she proclaimed on The Come Up, a rap video series featuring interviews and music vignettes, in 2007. Ann PowersĮven before she was crowned the queen of hip-hop, Nicki Minaj took the title. Our 25 Most Influential Women Musicians of the 21st Century illuminate its complexities. What is a woman? It's a timeless question on the surface, but one deeply engaged with whatever historical moment in which it is asked. As always, women forge new pathways in sound today, they also make waves under the surface of culture by confronting, in their music, the increased fluidity of "woman" itself. Some rethink the building legacies of popular artists others celebrate those who create within subcultures, their innovations rippling outward over time. The 25 arguments writers make in these pieces challenge the usual definitions of influence. This series of essays takes on another task.
Our list of the 200 Greatest Songs By Women+ offers a soundtrack to a new century. This year, Turning the Tables considers how women and non-binary artists are shaping music in our moment, from the pop mainstream to the sinecures of jazz and contemporary classical music.
The Turning the Tables project seeks to suggest alternatives to the traditional popular music canon, and to do more than that, too: to stimulate conversation about how hierarchies emerge and endure.