Nicki Minaj doesn’t have much time for her detractors, including those who recently set the Web ablaze with speculation about whether her assets had been enhanced with “butt pads.”
Did it bother her? “Absolutely not!” the Queens-bred rapper and Lil Wayne protégé says with a laugh. “People will pick anything to talk about, and that happens to be the thing at the moment. I love being a conversation piece.”
Minaj — born Onika Tanya Maraj to an Afro- and Indo-Trinidadian family — is already displaying some of the diva-like tendencies of a higher-wattage star. Note: There may be better ways to end an interview than tossing the phone to your publicist mid-question.
Hip-hop aficionados have been tuned in to the sexed-up mixtape queen since she surfaced in 2006, Minaj hasn’t become the household name she wants to be. But in the past year, she’s made strides toward that goal, performing playfully smutty rhymes on tracks by Usher, Ludacris and Mariah Carey, and prepping an album for release on Wayne’s hot label, Young Money Entertainment.
Her first single, “Massive Attack,” generated huge buzz thanks to a flashy video by Hype Williams that landed it in the R&B charts. But now fans expect more from the rapstress, which may take time, since she admits she hasn’t gotten around to recording any other tracks yet.
“Mmmmm no,” she laughs slyly. “I wish! But you know, the stuff that I’ve done — it doesn’t really reflect me anymore, so I want to have an entirely new body of work.”
The mainstream-ready Minaj — a buxom, blinged-out vamp whose first video finds her bewigged and cavorting in a pink Lamborghini — is a far cry from the rough-edged guy’s girl with a stoner laugh that appeared on her early mixtapes. (Sample lyric: “I take my shirt off and watch the boys go nuts/ boys go nuts/all the dope boys, all the boys wanna f – – -.”)
Back then she called herself “Nikki Lewinsky” and placed earnest monologues between songs. In one, she told fans to get their minds out of the gutter for thinking the lyric “two sticks in my bun” was anything more than a hairstyling tip.
Minaj, 26, grew up in a Southside Jamaica household that was “a little rough. I had one parent that drank and was really into drugs,” she says, with a trace of Queens accent. “But I had a happy childhood outside of that. My mother was always singing and making me sing in church.”
Rapwise, she was a Slick Rick girl. “I remember that I was very young, and what’s that song, ‘Mona Lisa’? I loved his accent.”
It wasn’t until Minaj graduated from the drama program at LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts that she realized rap was her calling. “At first, I fell in love with acting,” she explains, “And I kind of gave up on the singing, because well, I’m just not that good at it. And then I realized that rapping was something that I thought I could really master.”
After a few years working a 9-to-5 job and moonlighting as a backup singer, Minaj pursued a rap career in earnest. Fendi, the CEO of Brooklyn-based Dirty Money, found her MySpace page and put her on a DVD featuring Jay-Z and Lil Wayne.
“Wayne saw me on the DVD and liked what he saw,” she recalls. “He was putting something together called Young Money and he wanted a girl for it.”
Minaj went on to release four mixtapes full of rapid-fire, in-your-face rhymes, often featuring guest turns by Wayne. She simultaneously worked her sex appeal, posing as a scantily clad Barbie for the cover of her first tape, 2007’s “Playtime Is Over.” Then she mimicked an infamous Lil’ Kim crotch shot on “Sucka Free.”
The bombastic, siren-fueled “Massive Attack” isn’t necessarily a good indication of where she’s headed, she adds. “ ‘Massive Attack’ is just one facet of what the album may sound like. I didn’t want to come out with the basic rap record that everybody expects from a female.”
To that end, Minaj is working with new producers and re-evaluating the way she presents herself. “It’s a certain kind of swag that’s changed in me,” she says. “I want to be more aggressive.”
She’ll need to be, given her critics. Lil’ Kim reportedly posted a collage of Minaj shots to her Facebook page with the tag line, “Why you so obsessed with me?” Rootsy rapper Khia dismissed her with: “We don’t have Barbies in the ’hood.” Even legends Pepa and Eric B. piled on.
Amid the attacks, she made more headlines by pulling out of a tour with Rihanna and Ke$ha, prompting one blog to write, “Nicki Minaj Tells Rihanna To Kiss Her A$$!” Then she dropped her manager, leading to rumors that she had hired Diddy and been recruited for Lady Gaga’s next world tour.
Her publicist’s response to those latter news bites? 1. “No comment.” 2. “That’s just a rumor, though I’m sure she’d welcome it.”
But if Minaj ever wants to hit Gaga levels of fame, she might want to finish that pesky first album.