Nicki Minaj: Discover Her Many Personalities

Nicki Minaj is a Trinidadian-American rapper and R&B singer-songwriter. Her real name is Onika Tanya Minaj, and she was born on December 8, 1984 in Saint James, Trinidad and Tobago to parents of Indian and Afro Trinidadian descent. She lived in Saint James with her grandmother until the age of five because her parents were searching for a home in Queens, New York. After occasionally visiting her over the years, her mother finally took Nikki to Queens with her when she was 5 years old. Nicki’s father drank alcohol, took drugs, and once tried killing her mother by setting the house on fire. She attended Elizabeth Blackwell Middle School 210 where she enjoyed playing the clarinet. She graduated from LaGuardia High School, a school specializing in music and the visual and performing arts. During her years at LaGuardia, Nicki participated in the Drama program; although she had initially planned to sing, she lost her voice on the audition day.

In Minaj’s early career, she released three mixtapes: Playtime Is Over, Sucka Free, and Beam Me Up Scotty. She was then discovered by Lil Wayne and signed a deal with Young Money Entertainment in August 2009. In 2008 she won the Female Artist of the Year award at the Underground Music Awards. After that, Nicki started working on her debut album, Pink Friday, which was released on November 19, 2010 and reached number two on the US Billboard 200. She became the first artist to have seven songs on the Billboard Hot 100 at the same time. Her second single, Your Love, reached number one on the Billboard Hot Rap Songs chart. One month after her album’s release, Pink Friday gained a Platinum Certification in the US. Minaj is known for collaborating with many other artists and performing guest raps on many popular singles. In August 2010, Nicki released her first official single from her debut album, Your Love, and it peaked at number 14 on the Billboard Hot 100. Nicki also released a joint single with will.i.am (from The Black Eyed Peas) which is still her most successful single to date around Europe.

Minaj’s musical influences include Lil Wayne, Lauryn Hill, Jadakiss, Natasha Bedingfield, Foxy Brown, Lil’ Kim and Missy Elliott.

In an interview with Vibe magazine, Minaj spoke about her sexual image:
“When I grew up I saw females doing certain things, and I thought I had to do that exactly. The female rappers of my day spoke about sex a lot… and I thought that to have the success they got, I would have to represent the same thing; when in fact I didn’t have to represent the same thing.”

In an interview with Interview, Minaj spoke about her sexual image again:
^“I made a conscious decision to try to tone down the sexiness, I want people—especially young girls—to know that in life, nothing is going to be based on sex appeal. You’ve got to have something else to go with that.”

Nicki grew up in a very troubled and dysfunctional household, so she created alter egos to escape her problems. In an interview with New York, she said “To get away from all their fighting, I would imagine being a new person. ‘Cookie’ was my first identity—that stayed with me for a while. I went on to ‘Harajuku Barbie’, then ‘Nicki Minaj’. Fantasy was my reality.”
For her debut album, Minaj created another alter-ego named “Roman Zolanski”. She stated that in songs like “Bottoms Up” with Trey Songz it is Roman Zolanski rapping, not Nicki, and claims that Roman is her “twin sister”. Roman has been compared to Eminem’s alter ego Slim Shady, and on the song “Roman’s Revenge” from Pink Friday, Minaj and Eminem collaborate, using these alter egos.
On November 18, 2010 Nicki Minaj assumed a different alter-ego named “Nicki Teresa”. Wearing a colorful scarf around her head, she went around as the “healer to her fans” as she visited them at The Garden of Dreams Foundation at Fuse studios in New York City. Minaj made an appearance on Lopez Tonight on December 6, 2010 and presented a different alter-ego for the Spanish-inspired occasion, named “Rosa”.

While some songs and interviews have implied that Minaj is bisexual, she has said that she does not date nor have sex with women, but added in an interview with Out magazine, “I don’t date men either”. In an interview with Vibe she commented, “… I feel like people always wanna define me and I don’t wanna be defined.” She reiterated her dislike of being labeled in an interview with Out, saying: “The point is, everyone is not black and white. There are so many shades in the middle, and you’ve got to let people feel comfortable with saying what they want to say when they want to say it.”

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Posted by Rita D. on January 13, 2011. Filed under Artists, Music, News. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0. You can leave a response or trackback to this entry