With hits like Anaconda, Starships, and Super Bass, Nicki Minaj, the leader of Young Money and Barbie Queen, shot to fame.

She is the first independent female artist with seven singles charting at once on the Billboard 100 chart.

Her full name is Onika Tanya Maraj-Petty, and she is a Trinidadian singer, rapper, songwriter, and actress.

Advertisement

Get New DJ Mixes

Early Life

Nicki Minaj was born and brought into the world on December 8, 1982, in Saint James, Trinidad and Tobago. When she was five years old, her family relocated to Queens, New York.

Her father, Robert Maraj, was a violent drug user with a history who once tried to kill Minaj’s mother, Carol Maraj, by setting fire to the family house.

She was able to stay focused thanks to these early setbacks, which fueled her motivation to succeed and change her parents’ lives.

She went under several aliases before becoming well-known under the moniker “Nicki Minaj,” including “Cookie” and “Harajuku Barbie.”

Nicki Minaj was extremely passionate and enthused about performing. She started her first rap when she was 12 years old, after which she began acting at LaGuardia High School of Music and Art.

Even if it didn’t happen right away, she claimed that this was the school that served as the model for the movie stardom.

She worked as a server at Red Lobster while she was growing up but was dismissed because she was unkind to the patrons.

Career

For local New York City rappers like Full Force, Nicki Minaj took on backup vocal duties. She started penning her content not too long after. Fendi, the CEO of Dirty Money, subsequently found her after visiting Nicki Minaj’s MySpace website. He marked her to his name and treasured what he had heard.

That connection led Nicki Minaj to Lil Wayne, who collaborated with her on a series of mixtapes as a result. Playtime Is Over, the first mixtape, was delivered in April 2007. Other mixtapes followed, such as Sucka Free (2008) and Beam Me Up Scotty (2009). She joined Lil Wayne’s Young Money label in August 2009, becoming the label’s first female artist. She worked with Mariah Carey and Robin Thicke to advance her career.

Huge Attack, her debut single, was released in April 2010 and was followed by Your Love. She won Best Hip Hop Female at the annual BET Awards two months later. She gave Lil Wayne the honor. Eight singles from the Pink Friday album were released in November of that year. It achieved triple platinum status and earned favorable reviews.

She issued another album in 2012 under the name “Roman Reloaded.” With songs like the catchy dance hits Starships, Pound the Alarm, Va Va Voom, and Roman Holiday on the album, it turned out to be a huge success. She later sang them at the Grammy Awards the same year.

On December 12, 2014, Nicki Minaj released eight additional singles from her subsequent album, The Pinkprint. Big names in the music business like Beyoncé, Chris Brown, Ariana Grande, and Drake were featured on the album. She earned the Best Female Hip Hop Artist award at the 2016 BET Awards for the seventh time in a row after the song reached double platinum sales.

In 2017, she appeared on a colossal amount of singles. With the simultaneous release and success of No Frauds, Lament in Your Tears, and Transformed It, she succeeded Aretha Franklin in holding the record for the most female artists’ Billboard Hot 100 entries.

She voiced the mammoth “Steffie” in the 2012 film Ice Age: Continental Drift, and she also appeared in The Angry Birds Movie 2 as a voice actress. In 2014’s The Other Woman, she made her film debut alongside Cameron Diaz. Later, she was nominated for a Teen Choice Award in 2016 for her performance in Barbershop: The Next Cut.

She has managed numerous advertising campaigns and endorsement arrangements with well-known companies like MAC Cosmetics, Adidas Originals, and Pepsi. Even her own perfume line exists. She also has stock in the Tidal online service.

Chun-Li and Barbie Tingz are two new songs by Nicki Minaj that were released in April. Later, she performed “Bed” with Ariana Grande and “Rich Sex” with Lil Wayne. Rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine was also a featured artist on her song “FEFE.”

Two days after her fourth studio album, Queen, released at No. 2, Nicki Minaj started her radio program on Apple Music’s Beats 1 service on August 8 of the same year.

In early 2019, Nicki Minaj kicked off The Nicki World Tour in Frankfurt, Germany, alongside late rapper Juice Wrld. Along with her many collaborations, the artist dropped her first solo single of the year, “Megatron,” in late June.

In September, Nicki Minaj posted a stunning tweet that she had decided to retire to have a family but promised her fans more music to come. She got hitched to her beau, Kenneth Petty, in October.

After kicking off 2020 with the Meghan Trainor collaboration “Nice to Meet Ya,” Nicki Minaj appeared as a guest judge on the season 12 premiere of RuPaul’s Drag Race. She then joined Doja Cat for a remix of “Say So,” which became Nicki Minaj‘s first song to reach the Billboard Hot 100.

Personal Life

In October 2019, Nicki Minaj and Kenneth Petty got hitched. She revealed her pregnancy in July 2020, and on September 30, 2020, they had their son, whom she usually refers to as “Papa Bear” in public.

Net Worth

Rapper Nicki Minaj, a Trinidadian who lives in America, is thought to be worth $80 million.