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About Nicki Minaj:
While the demise of hip-hop has been a matter of debate in recent years, the end of the celebrity womanly emcee had been all but accepted.
There had for all time been at least a one female rap act to contrast hip-hop’s defining male edge, from Queen Latifah to Lil Kim to Missy Elliott to Lauryn Hill. But in the past a small amount of years, women rappers were mere blips on the scene, and the occasional hit simply underscored how weak the field had become.
Not now.
Nicki Minaj, the in-your-face, highly lively sex kitten and protege of rap prince Lil Wayne, has not only emerged as hip-hop’s foremost female, she’s outdoing her male counterparts, too.
The 26-year-old Minaj has yet to release an official studio album, but she’s saturating all facets of hip-hop, from radio to mixtapes to magazines.
She’s costarred on songs with Lil Wayne, Drake, Usher, Mariah Carey, Christina Aguilera and Diddy, in the midst of many others. She’s also set to appear on Kanye West’s upcoming CD. With her collaborations, she’s landed 10 songs on Billboard’s R&B/Hip-Hop singles chart, including three in the Top 10; and Minaj’s had eight overall tunes on the Hot 100.
Her in progress single, the Annie Lennox-sampled “Your Love,” is spending its seventh week on top of the rap charts; it’s the first time a female act, as the lead artist, has topped that diagram since Lil Kim did in 2003. And “Your Love” is steadily mountaineering elsewhere, peaking at No. 5 and No. 14 on the R&B and Hot 100 charts, respectively.
“I imagine since Nicki came out there’s going to be a lot of new girls coming out,” producer-rapper Pharrell said. “There’s always one that paves the way and opens the door (and) I think she reopened the entrance to hip-hop for females.”
Minaj, whose real name is Onika Maraj, was born in Trinidad, but grew up in Queens, N.Y. Lil Wayne exposed Minaj and signed her to his Cash Money impression last year. She’s released three mixtapes and performs with the rap group Young Money, which includes Lil Wayne and Drake. The group’s 2009 album, the gold-selling “We Are Young Money,” has produced two Top 10 singles on the pop charts.
“Now that you have somebody that has pretty much her own approach and does her own thing, the people are gravitating in the direction of it, so I think that makes her stick out ’cause she’s so different,” said Ludacris, who had Minaj rap on his hit “My Chick Bad.”
Minaj’s style is one that is playful, young at heart and wild. She wears multicolored wigs, sings and raps in a variety of accents and boasts about her sexuality, even playing up bisexuality, though she’s said in a current Vibe dialogue that she doesn’t date or sleep with women. (Minaj’s rep said the rapper would not be interviewed for this article because it was not only about her.)
Like Minaj, a lot of female rappers reached their height in the middle 1990s to early 2000s as part of a hip-hop posse.
Junior M.A.F.I.A introduced Lil Kim, the multiplatinum diva who flaunted her sex appeal on the mic and in her music videos. Jay-Z introduced Foxy Brown, a feisty, competent rapper who battled Lil Kim for rap’s top female spot in the 90s. And Ruff Ryders, led by DMX, brought onward Eve.
50 Cent thought the decline of those kind of posses has incomplete new female talent.
“There’s not as many female rappers because there’s not as many emerging crews,” 50 Cent explained. “When those new crews come up, there’s a potential for a female artist when the head of that crew sees the idea of bringing a celebrity to speak from a female perspective.”
Lil Kim and Foxy Brown mutually have seen their careers wane after criminal charges led to time behind bars.
Eve has achieved platinum success, won a Grammy and stretched into TV and movies, but she has had trouble releasing her fourth album after two disappointing singles in 2007. After leaving Interscope, she plans to release a novel album with EMI in January.
When asked about the lack of top female rappers, Eve said: “I wish I had an respond or some type of theory.
“In my travels, I do meet girls who are like, ‘Oh, I want to be an emcee. I want to rap.’ So I don’t know what the trouble is or why it hasn’t happened.”
