S. Samuel
After Nicki Minaj's impressive 2010 accented with album accolades and television performances, SOHH spoke to hip-hop personality/lyricist Amanda Diva about her take on the "Barbie's" achievements.
While she is proud of Minaj pushing through hip-hop’s male-dominated threshold, Diva hopes more diverse female artists will follow suit.
“I give Nicki Minaj credit for defining herself, her brand, her style, within this c*ckfest of a music business,” Diva told SOHH. “That’s a very hard thing to do. I always say it’s a c*ckfest but women don’t have any voices in it. So it’s really hard to do what you have to do to get it cracking. But, she’s been able to do that. I can’t take that away from her at all. I would just really like to see an ‘other.’ I would like to see contrasting images other than her own because she’s so specific, and that isn’t necessarily relative to a lot of sh*t.” (SOHH)
Last month, hip-hop pioneer MC Lyte discussed Minaj’s genre-transcending abilities.
“Those who really need to be worried by Nicki’s record is Fergie, Gwen Stefani, Nelly Furtado,” Lyte said in an interview. “Nicki is coming out to win. She’s not thinking of the block. She’s not just thinking of the city. So she’s able to handle so many areas of what it takes right now to be an international star. So hats off to everybody that’s doing it but, I see the vision that Nicki sees for herself that people probably didn’t see before.” (VH1)
Last year, Minaj said she felt pressured to drop a quality debut album in order to pave a lane for her fellow female counterparts.
“[Young Money] won’t look to sign other female rappers if the project doesn’t do well, because they’re going to say, ‘Well, her buzz was so crazy, and if she couldn’t do it, then no one can do it,’ and I don’t want that to happen. So I’m doing this as well for all the girls…I hope it will open doors for all girls everywhere who ever wanted to pick up a mic and rap and who have been kind of afraid to do it…For a long time in my life, I was afraid to be a solo female rapper, because everyone told me, ‘It doesn’t work. It’s not going to happen. Record companies are never going to invest in you just to get it. Just be part of a group.’ … Even as far as I’ve come now is already a testament in my mind, so I hope the female rappers understand how big it is for our culture that the album does well.” (V-103)
To date, Minaj’s Pink Friday debut album has remained on the sales chart since its November release.
Young Money’s Nicki Minaj debut album, Pink Friday, remained at No. 8 with 133,000. With five weeks to her name, the rapper’s long-awaited debut has shelled out 791,400 scanned discs. (SOHH Sales Wrap)
Check out a past Nicki Minaj interview below:
