We were entering another decade and, while the future of hip-hop was undoubtedly exciting, the landscape for female MCs was not. The few preceding years before Nicki Minaj emerged as a force to be reckoned with in 2010 had seen many give up on the idea of another female rap superstar. At the time, there weren’t any female rappers still relevant on a large scale, and Nicki saw her chance. When Nicki emerged nationally, the lane for female rappers was essentially closed. Nicki Minaj’s ascendancy to the upper echelons of the music industry is a testament to the drastically different times we now live in, where fame is certainly more attainable than ever before, but it is also an example of someone identifying a void and quickly filling it. How else could this Caribbean-born, Queens-bred wannabe rapper leap from the realms of the unknown rap amateur in urban street hip-hop DVDs to performing and dropping it low alongside the most legendary pop star to walk the planet during the Super Bowl halftime show – the most watched entertainment performance every year around the world? To call the self-described Harajuku Barbie unreal (Harajuku being the over-the-top street style of Japanese girls hanging out at Harajuku Station in Tokyo, introduced to the pop music world back in 2004 by Gwen Stefani in her track ‘Harajuku Girls’) may be the only way to make sense of her nearly impossible, beyond meteoric rise to superstardom. Minaj gave a lyrical lashing to her (non-existent) competitors, an about-face to the song’s co-stars (including a couple of guys named Jay-Z and Rick Ross) and an overall unapologetic middle finger to all those who, at the time, still doubted that she could even rap. It’s also not that during the few short years of her time on the rap scene, she has unleashed some of the most ridiculous lyrics ever heard, such as: First thing’s first, I’ll eat your brains/Then I’mma start rocking gold teeth and fangs, which she memorably quipped on the Kanye West-produced 2010 hit song ‘Monster’. It’s not just that she dresses in candy-coated outrageousness: sporting severely dyed wigs and rocking colour-clashing and second skin get-ups that have pushed the boundaries of hip-hop and fashion.
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