Nicki Minaj has signed a management deal with Irving and Jeffrey Azoff’s Full Stop Management, sources tell Variety. Earlier this year, the rapper/singer parted ways with Gee Roberson and Cortez Bryant and Blueprint/ Maverick Management, who had represented her for the majority of her career.
The move is an interesting one for several reasons. Full Stop handles a wide range of artists including Travis Scott and Gwen Stefani, and it could be argued that Minaj, who is 36 and has been a widely recognized recording artist and celebrity for more than a decade, could reap the benefits of Scott’s mainstream hip-hop following, as well as the later-in-career moves that the management team has brought to Stefani, such as a Las Vegas residency and television appearances — although Minaj did serve a controversial stint on “American Idol” in 2013, where she feuded with fellow judge and diva Mariah Carey.
It is also interesting because Minaj criticized Azoff bitterly last summer in the wake of her “Queen” tour’s postponement, calling him the “c—sucker of the day” on her Beats 1 radio show and accusing him of launching a “smear campaign about my tour, and contacted people in the media to spread negative things about my tour.” The tour ultimately proceeded, with some bumps, in Europe, although the U.S. leg was rescheduled with her as the special guest on Chris Brown’s forthcoming North American tour in the late summer.
Azoff declined comment at the time, but this would not be the first time in his 50-year career that he buried the hatchet with an artist with whom he’d previously feuded.
A rep for Minaj did not immediately grant Variety‘s request for comment.
