Nicki Minaj

Raised in New York City, Minaj began rapping professionally in the early 2000s and gained recognition with her three mixtapes between 2007 and 2009. Minaj's debut studio album, Pink Friday (2010), opened with the largest female rap album sales week of the 21st century, topped the US Billboard 200, and spawned the single "Super Bass". She explored dance-pop on her second US number-one album, Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded (2012), which produced the top-five single, "Starships". She returned to her hip-hop roots with The Pinkprint (2014) and Queen (2018), which yielded the singles "Anaconda" and "Chun-Li". Minaj achieved her first Billboard Hot 100 number-one singles with the 2020 duets "Say So" and "Trollz"; the former was the first female rap collaboration to top the chart. Her fifth album, Pink Friday 2 (2023), made her the female rapper with the most US number-one albums (three) and spawned her first solo US number-one single, "Super Freaky Girl". Its concert tour became the highest-grossing by a female rapper and one of the top five highest-grossing tours by a rapper in history.

Minaj successfully auditioned for admission to Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts, which focuses on visual and performing arts. A week after graduation, she was cast in the Off-Broadway play In Case You Forget. In her youth, Minaj worked many jobs, including as a waitress at a Red Lobster in the Bronx, customer service representative, and office management on Wall Street, and was fired for discourtesy to customers.

Pink Friday was certified platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA) in December 2010, for accumulating a million units in the United States. It became the first album by a solo female rapper to go platinum in seven years. As of March 2016, it has been certified triple-platinum. "Moment 4 Life" featuring Drake was released as the fourth single from Pink Friday, on December 7, 2010. It reached number 13 on the Hot 100. Minaj performed "Right Thru Me" and "Moment 4 Life" as the musical guest on the January 29, 2011, episode of Saturday Night Live. In February 2011, Lil' Kim released the mixtape Black Friday referencing Minaj, including artwork that showed Lil' Kim decapitating Minaj with a sword and the lyrics "sweetie, you goin' on your 14th minute of fame" and "you a Lil' Kim wannabe". Lil' Kim sold the mixtape on PayPal. Minaj's track "Tragedy" was released online, featuring the lyrics "Pink Friday, Eminem, 8 Mile/ It must hurt to sell your album on PayPal."

Minaj was one of the opening acts on Britney Spears' 2011 Femme Fatale Tour. She and Kesha appeared on the remix of Spears' "Till the World Ends", which peaked at number three in the U.S. On August 7, 2011, Minaj experienced a wardrobe malfunction during a live performance on Good Morning America when she revealed her left nipple. Both ABC and Minaj apologized for the incident, with Minaj denying it was a publicity stunt. Minaj continued to perform at high-profile events throughout 2011 with Donatella Versace inviting her to perform with Prince for the introduction of a Versace collection for H&M. She also performed "Super Bass" at the 2011 Victoria's Secret Fashion Show. In December 2011, Minaj was nominated for three Grammy Awards, including Best New Artist and Best Rap Album for Pink Friday. Also that year, she won the MTV Video Music Award for Best Hip-Hop Video for "Super Bass", marking her first VMA win. In 2022, the album was included in Rolling Stone's list of "200 Greatest Hip-Hop Albums of All Time" at number 31; the magazine stated that Pink Friday "proved you could own the charts without dialing back your confrontational individuality, and it set the table for a generation of artists." In 2024, Vibe named it as one of the "50 Greatest Black Albums of the Modern Era".

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