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udging by her name, and often scantily-clad figure, you might mistake Nicki Minaj (pronounced “ménage”) as just another female emcee attempting to use sex to sell records. But that notion disappears as soon as she grabs the mic.
“Sure, sex sells,” she admits. “But it’s not just about being sexy. Your music has to actually sound good, [and] within the next twelve months everybody is gonna start to see all of my talents. It’s more to Nicki Minaj than what people assume.” Most people don’t assume that Minaj, who has frequently been compared to such salacious stars as Lil’ Kim and Foxy Brown, originally intended to become a singer. In fact, she began as a preteen, casually singing hooks for local rappers in her native Southside Jamaica, Queens neighborhood. Eventually, she grew bored with singing hooks, but couldn’t bring herself to conform to the traditional rules of the R&B world. “I didn’t want to have to sing love songs,” she confesses, “so I started rapping instead. I would freestyle and make everybody laugh because I was so whack, but little by little I starting getting good at it.” As she matured, her fledging rap skills became more and more evident. Still, Nicki Lewinski, as she refers to herself, didn’t take her craft seriously until her peers began to cosign. “When people started really believing it, that’s when I started to go hard,” she says. “Going hard” included posting her music on a Myspace page which attracted the attention of The Come Up DVD creator Fendi, who featured her on his DVD. Lil Wayne, who viewed the episode, was impressed enough to get her in the studio.
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Nicki and Wayne worked on a plethora of projects including Sucka FreThe Mixtape, which received overwhelmingly rave reviews, and while a label situation with Wayne’s Young Money seemed eminent, it never materialized. Instead, Nicki was introduced to Gucci Mane and his aunt and longtime business partner, Debra Hinton, who flew the sexy singa turnt rappa to Atlanta and signed her to a management deal. “I don’t wanna upset anybody back home in New York, but the love in the Atlanta is just so much more real,” Minaj acknowledges. “The artists’ have so much camaraderie; it’s like a breath of fresh air.” In fact, she became so comfortable in Atlanta that she even dubbed herself “The New York Queen of the South.” Now that she’s been featured on projects with several Southern rappers including Gucci Mane, Soulja Boy, Gorilla Zoe, and OJ Da Juice, Nicki has certainly become acclimated to Atlanta rap. Although she’s still searching for the right record deal, Ms. Minaj is confident in her abilities and determined to prove she’s more than meets the eye. “If you took a lot of swag and mixed it up in a pot with wit and humor, and a little bit of gangstress, that would be Nikki Minaj. I’m the complete package,” she concludes. Words by Eric Perrin