Nicki Minaj

Background

The story of the American rap music industry will be incomplete without mentioning Nicki Minaj, one of the female best-selling rappers of all time. The Queen of Rap has sold over a hundred million copies of her music worldwide. She enticed listeners with her provocative lyrics, snappy wordplays, and her use of accents and alter egos. Minaj was born on December 8, 1982, in the Saint James section of Port of Spain, Trinidad & Tobago. Her zodiac sign is Sagittarius, and her ethnicity is Indo-Trinidadian and Afro- Trinidadian.

Her parents are Robert Maraj and Carol Maraj, and apart from their full-time jobs, they were gospel singers. They moved with Minaj to the U.S. when she was just five years old, and they settled in South Jamaica, Queens, and New York. Minaj wanted to be an actor. She attended LaGuardia performing arts school in Manhattan to achieve her goal. After high school, she pursued a career in acting, but it never really took off. She then worked as a waitress to support herself but got fired too many times for being rude to customers.

She left acting and focused on music. She became a part of the Full Force quartet, The Hood stars. She created many songs with her group and shared her music with everyone she knew in the New York music industry. In 2007, the C.E.O. of Dirty Money Entertainment signed her to his record label for six months. While there, she made three mixtapes. Lil Wayne heard her mixtapes, and he signed her to his Young Money Entertainment record label in 2009. She released her first album, “Pink Friday” the following year (2010), and it eventually reached number one on the Billboard 200 album charts.