Becoming a top rapper in today’s music industry is no easy feat—it takes raw talent, determination, persistence, and the ability to stand out (hey, marketing matters). While many musicians are self-proclaimed “top rappers of all time,” most agree that when it comes to women in the genre, Nicki Minaj is at the top of the list. 

Born in Trinidad and Tobago and brought to the U.S. when she was just five years old, Minaj has a true rags-to-riches story. From the streets of Queens, NY, to generating the highest-grossing tour by a female rapper in history, below we walk through Minaj’s Cinderella story, her two-decade career, and the net worth that has made her the wealthiest female rapper of all time. 

Nicki Minaj’s Cinderella Story 

Minaj was born on December 8, 1982, in Trinidad and Tobago, with the name Onika Tanya Maraj. When she was young her friends nicknamed her Nicki and it stuck, with the last name Minaj coming years later. 

When asked why she changed her last name, the “Super Bass” singer told The Guardian, “Somebody changed my name. One of the first production deals I signed, the guy wanted my name to be Minaj and I fought him tooth and nail. But he convinced me. I’ve always hated it.”

But Minaj is just a character, she says. When she’s with her friends and family, they never call her by her stage name.

“I think of her more like the Superman suit, like who you change into when you go into the telephone booth,” she told Vogue. “They’re completely different entities.” 

Before moving to the U.S., Minaj and her older brother Jelani lived with her grandmother and 11 cousins in Saint James while their mother was in college. When she was five, her parents brought her and her siblings to live with them in South Jamaica, Queens, NY. While there isn’t a lot of information on her childhood after moving here, we know Minaj attended LaGuardia High School for the Performing Arts in Manhattan, where she majored in drama. 

“It was the first time I felt like I really fit in,” Minaj told Teen Vogue about attending LaGuardia. “Everyone there was creative. For once, I didn’t feel like there was something weird about me.”

After high school, Minaj had random jobs as she pursued her music career. From 2002 to 2004, Minaj worked with various music groups before going out on her own. Over the next few years, Minaj would work part-time as a waitress or office manager while posting all of her music to her Myspace profile.

In 2007, her music career really began when Fendi, CEO of Dirty Money Entertainment, signed her to his record label. This same year, she released her first mixtape, Playtime Is Over. While the album didn’t exactly take off, her next two, Sucka Free and Beam Me Up Scotty (both released in 2008), received some significant coverage on BET and MTV.

After a few more years of grinding, Minaj signed with Young Money, Lil Wayne’s record company. Minaj credits a lot of her success to the fellow rapper’s help.

“I can’t even imagine my career, um, my creative spirit without Wayne,” she told Interview in 2011. “I credit him with a lot of what I do. Prior to him, no one relevant in hip-hop really gave me that support. I feel like I’m still intertwined with him creatively.

“Before I met Wayne, the person that was spearheading my career was the one person who always told me, ‘Don’t be too playful, don’t be too kooky and weird… no one’s gonna feel that, nobody wants to hear that,'” she added. “So I stifled a lot of that early on, and then once that we parted ways, I was like, ‘Guess what, I’m gonna just be me.'”

Her career skyrocketed with features on popular songs like Young Money’s “BedRock” and Kanye West’s “Monster,” then with her own album Pink Friday in 2010. “Your Love,” the album’s lead single, peaked at No. 14 on the U.S. Billboard Hot 100 and No. 1 on the Rap Songs chart.

For the next several years, Minaj dominated with singles like “Roman’s Revenge” featuring Eminem and “Super Bass,” earning top spots on several music charts. 

She spent the next few years on her Pink Friday Tour and released her second and third albums. Songs like “Starships” and “Beez in the Trap” were big hitters at the time but made her question her title as “queen of rap.” 

In 2014, Minaj released her third studio album The Pinkprint, which she wanted to return to her hip-hop roots.

“I was thinking If I really wanted to, I could go back in and make another pop song like that to sell but I’m choosing not to do it. I’m choosing to get back to my essence and feed the core hip-hop fan,” she told Billboard. “I feel like I need this because it’s just a more powerful platform for me… Even when I’m on stage performing my rap songs, it’s more organic.”

From 2014 to 2019, it was all about music for the “Pound the Alarm” singer. During this time, her output was huge, including her fourth studio album Queen and singles such as “Chun-Li,” “Barbie Tingz,” and “Megatron.”

In 2019, Minaj claimed she was retiring via Twitter, but she later came back to say she would most likely never fully step away from music.

“I’ve decided to retire & have my family,” she wrote in a since-deleted post. “I know you guys are happy now. To my fans, keep reppin me, do it til da death of me, (X) in the box- cuz ain’t nobody checkin me. Love you for LIFE.”

In an interview with Billboard a few months later, Minaj backtracked. 

“I love music and interacting with fans, so I can’t really see taking myself completely away. But I want to be open to other possibilities in my life,” she said. “I do believe it is important to become a woman outside of the magnifying glass. I have to make sure that I’m well-rounded as a human being.”

In 2023, Minaj dropped her fifth studio album, Pink Friday 2. Soon after, Minaj took to Instagram to give her fans a sneak peek of a rap she made titled “Big Foot.” The song was released on January 28, 2024, and it broke first-day records as the biggest solo female rap debut in Apple Music history. All this to say she’s still the “highest-selling female rapper for the record.”

Source

Nicki Minaj’s former manager has accused the rap superstar of berating and hitting him multiple times while she was on tour in Detroit.

In a lawsuit, Brandon Jovan Garrett alleged that Minaj, 42, whose real name is Onika Maraj, assaulted him April 21 after a concert at Little Caesars Arena in Detroit.

The lawsuit, filed Friday in Los Angeles County Superior Court, accuses Minaj of assault, battery and intentional emotional distress. Her company, Pink Personality Inc., is also named as a defendant.

An attorney for Minaj did not immediately respond to a request for comment Monday.

Garrett, who described himself as Minaj’s “day to day manger,” says in the suit that on April 21, while he was on his way back from buying ice cream that Minaj requested, her head of security summoned him to her dressing room.

Minaj was in the room with the head of security and five other members of her team and was upset about the way jobs were being handled among her employees, according to the suit.

A member of Minaj’s team then asked Garrett why another employee was picking up her prescriptions. Garrett said he had someone else pick up the prescription because Minaj wanted it immediately and he was busy assisting her in the dressing room during performances, the suit says.

Minaj became enraged by Garrett’s answers and reaction, the lawsuit says. Garrett’s response provoked her “rage” even more, and she began yelling expletives at Garrett, the lawsuit says.

Minaj called Garrett crazy and said that he had lost his mind and that if her husband was there, “he would knock out” his teeth, it says.

“You’re a dead man walking. You just f—– up your whole life and you will never be anyone, I’ll make sure of it,” the lawsuit says Minaj told Garrett.

Minaj physically attacked Garrett, the lawsuit says, “open-handedly” striking him “on the right side of his face, causing his head to swing backwards as his hat flew off his head.” The lawsuit alleges she hit him on his right wrist, causing him to drop documents he was holding, before she kicked him out of the room.

Garrett then locked himself in a bathroom for hours because he feared for his safety, the suit says.

The next morning, Garrett received a text saying he would not be riding the tour bus from Detroit to Chicago, he said in the suit.

Garrett said in the lawsuit that he called Detroit police from the airport and was told he would have to file a police report in person.

Garrett returned to Detroit and filed a police report before he returned home to Los Angeles, according to the lawsuit.

Detroit police confirmed Monday that Garrett filed a report. Police said a warrant request had been sent to the Wayne County Prosecutor’s Office.

The prosecutor’s office said in a statement Monday that the warrant was denied because of “insufficient evidence to prove that a crime has been committed.”

The suit alleges that Minaj “abused her position of authority” and “berated, threatened, used profanities, and violently struck” Garrett multiple times. Her actions were done “with intent to cause severe emotional distress” or with conscious disregard to the probability Garrett “would suffer severe emotional distress.”

He is seeking a jury trial.

I’ve added high quality set of Nicki’s photoshoot for her latest single ‘Red Ruby Da Sleeze’ to the gallery. Be sure to visit the gallery for all photos. Thanks for help to Stefan!

Nicki Minaj is back with her first single of 2023, “Red Ruby Da Sleeze,” which she released on Friday (March 3) via Young Money Entertainment and Republic Records.

“Red Ruby Da Sleeze, Chinese on my sleeve/ These wannabe Chun-Li’s, anyway, nǐ hǎo/ Who the f— told bi—es they was me now?” she raps over Lumidee‘s 2003 smash “Never Leave You (Uh Oooh, Uh Oooh)” while also referencing her 2018 Billboard Hot 100 top 10 hit and alter-ego “Chun-Li.”

“Red Ruby Da Sleeze” marks her first solo single since 2022’s “Super Freaky Girl,” which became the rapper’s career-first solo Hot 100 No. 1 hit and the first No. 1 debut for a hip-hop song by a female artist with no accompanying acts since Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Wop (That Thing)” in 1998.

Minaj was recently ranked No. 7 on Billboard and Vibe‘s 50 Greatest Rappers of All Time list and the No. 10 on Billboard‘s Greatest Pop Stars of 2022 list. She also emerged as the winner of Billboard‘s inaugural Power Artist 2022 – Fan Choice bracket, where fans voted from the 32 artists who made the biggest impact on Billboard‘s 2022 year-end charts.

Listen to “Red Ruby Da Sleeze” below.

Nicki Minaj and husband Kenneth Petty are making headlines once again. However, this time it’s about a potential split.

Over the past few days, certain corners of the internet have been speculating that the “Super Freaky Girl” star finally ended things with Petty after online gossip blog MediaTakeOut alleged that the two were living apart, with online records showing that Minaj recently purchased a brand new $19.5 million mansion in Hidden Hills, California. Meanwhile, the California sexual offender registry lists a different address for her husband of three years, which is across the 101 Freeway in the city of Thousand Oaks.

The tabloid then went on to quote a source who claimed that their martial strife stems from public scrutiny surrounding Petty’s 1995 conviction for first-degree attempted rape in the state of New York, for which he previously served four years in prison. Throughout all this though, Minaj has not only continued to maintain her husband’s innocence, but has also allegedly tried to harass and intimidate the victim, Jennifer Hough, as she’s since filed another lawsuit against Petty for sexual assault and battery in relation to the incident, which happened in 1994 when they were both teenagers.

A few days later, TikToker @newdaynewtea also posted a blind item from someone who alleged that there’s “a lot of noise” about Minaj dumping Petty “because he didn’t travel with her overseas” to her native Trinidad and Tobago for the island’s annual Carnival celebration. But while the so-called source said that Petty isn’t allowed to leave the US after being sentenced to one year of home confinement due to his failure to register as a sex offender in California, they went on to claim that “there have been a series of strippers headed to his house while she has been gone.”

Even so, Minaj’s fans aren’t sure what to make of the rumors, as some are celebrating their rumored breakup while others believe it’s all baseless speculation, pointing out that the Grammy winner was seen wearing her ring in Trinidad and that Petty isn’t allowed to travel. Minaj and Petty have yet to comment on the split speculation.