Nicki Minaj Is the Influential Leader of Hip-Hop

Published: Tuesday, April 3, 2012 at 8:32 p.m.

Last Modified: Tuesday, April 3, 2012 at 8:32 p.m.

What's even more striking is how far her reach extends beyond hip-hop. When Madonna needed to tether her current comeback to the young female transgressors of the day, she chose Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. (Savvy Nicki would never be the one to throw up a middle finger.) At the Grammys in February she gave the most shocking performance, part exorcism and part Broadway spectacle. And in the lead-up to her new album, out Tuesday from Young Money/Cash Money/Universal Republic, her new songs have shown that she has no intention of being hemmed in by the expectations of genre, dabbling in slithery R&B on "Right by My Side" and outright giddy dance-pop on "Starships." When rapping on the songs of others, she's often the most capable emcee around take Birdman's "Y. U. Mad?" but on her own material she's often straddling a line between hip-hop and pop that no other rapper is capable of, or would even dare.

A few years ago, before her rise began, there were hardly any female rappers of note; now, a new generation, including Azealia Banks, Brianna Perry and Angel Haze, is rising quickly, working territory that she carved out. This is a story about influence, to be sure, but also about the weakening of old walls, and the reshaping of the gates that the gatekeepers keep. Thanks to Nicki Minaj and the possibilities she has laid bare, and to hip-hop's stasis of masculinity it is, outrageously and unprecedentedly, a more exciting time to be a female rapper than a male one.

She morphed into the most eclectic black-music style idol since Grace Jones, and certainly the one with the quickest ascent to the style elite, with a look that's loud, cartoonish and edging toward avant-garde. (Deep down, she's too much of a populist truly to go there.)

She's been on the covers of Vibe, XXL and the Fader, sure, but also of Cosmopolitan, Black Book, Elle and V. The current issue of Paper ! magazine features a modest Minaj on the cover: salmon blazer, lemon yellow top, Oscar-the-Grouch-green tangle of curls. Inside is a 16-page fashion spread full of models (sprinkled amongst commoners) wearing Nicki-inspired fashion: multicolored Afros, top-volume animal prints, neon makeup and shimmering fabrics, on both men and women.

NEW WAVE OF FEMALE RAPPERS

In short, emulating Nicki Minaj isn't difficult, because there's so much to play with. It's possible to take just a part of what she's done and come off as refreshing. And that's just what a new wave of female rappers has done. Take the bawdy Harlem rapscallion Azealia Banks, recipient of a heap of Internet affection in recent months. Like Nicki Minaj she raps and sings, and plays with various accents. (Like Nicki she went to LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in Manhattan.) Many of her best songs have been one-off collaborations with electronic music producers like Lunice and Machinedrum. But despite the blog success of the lusty "212," she's still something of a curio, a situation that her new label, Universal, will most likely be looking to remedy.

It shouldn't be tough. Banks is effervescent and charming, and seemingly extremely malleable. Flexible in a different way is the Miami rapper Brianna Perry, who recently signed to Atlantic. Perry most resembles the main earlier model of female rap success, the sex kitten and gangster's moll poses honed by Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown in the mid-1990s. (There's even YouTube footage of Perry performing at a recent birthday party for Lil' Kim in Miami.)

But in the last year, as evinced on YouTube, Perry has evolved her style significantly, both aesthetically and musically. She unfurls her syllables in a deliberate, distinctive fashion and adapts her delivery well to the beat, evident especially on a string of freestyles over other people's songs: Rick Ross' "Stay Schemin'," Wale's "Slight Work" and, most impressive, Tyga's "Rack City."

What Per! ry is mi ssing, though, is some of Nicki Minaj's effortlessness: She often appears to be scowling, even when the song calls for something softer. In a similar way Iggy Azalea, a white Australian woman, is stuck on one mood. She sounds as if she learned to rap for a part in a Movie of the Week: She's studied and awkward, an able imitator but not yet capable of more than that. Some of her rap moves come from Nicki Minaj, particularly the ways in which she tries to bend her voice into different shapes.

And Iggy Azalea, who signed with Interscope, has fully inhaled Nicki Minaj's skewed-Barbie aesthetic. Her videos are like small fashion shows, and Iggy Azalea, with her bottle-blonde hair and Jessica Rabbit manner, is inhabiting her character fully. (The white women of the new bunch appear to be playing with visuals the most; in addition to Iggy Azalea that includes Kreayshawn, who is frail as a rapper but as a carefully pieced together punk-chola doll, was one of last year's more intriguing arrivals.)

ROLE MODEL

Iggy Azalea's look is a reminder that for all of Nicki Minaj's achievements, she's still done little to upend the traditional weight of masculinity in hip-hop. And traditional masculine rules still hold sway. Women are still mostly sex objects, and men mostly think of them in commodity terms. Nicki Minaj's music is full of reposts to this idea, but her image still often works within that old framework. Take as a counterexample Drake, Nicki Minaj's label mate, who offers a more emotionally complicated palette. But there has not been a flood of rappers looking to ride his coattails. His subtle challenges to the masculine ideal are more vexing to rap than Nicki Minaj's almost-complete rebranding of the female's potential.

The rapper who's best taken advantage of the sound that Drake pioneered at least by rapping over his beats is Angel Haze, a meditative young woman with a gift for starkly emotional verse. She's released a handful of mixtapes, the most recent of which, ! "King," features several revelatory performances over the beats from Drake songs including "Marvins Room," "Fall For Your Type" (a Jamie Foxx collaboration) and "Dreams Money Can Buy."

But where Nicki Minaj's influence may be most vital is on artists who ordinarily have no business rapping, but who see in Nicki a relatable role model. Certainly Amy Heidemann of the grim cutesy-covers duo Karmin has some of Nicki's looseness in her approach. The actress Michelle Trachtenberg was a viral star when she posted video of herself rapping a Nicki song. Last year Taylor Swift was pronouncing Nicki Minaj's "Super Bass" as one of her favorite songs and rapping it for people. And most egregiously there's Katy Perry's recent butchering of "Paris," the neutered title of the Kanye West and Jay-Z hit. At this point Nicki Minaj is responsible for many children; some of them are bound to misbehave.

Barely a year and a half has passed since the release of "Pink Friday," the platinum debut album by Nicki Minaj, but her style is well honed. She's a sparkling rapper with a gift for comic accents and unexpected turns of phrase. She's a walking exaggeration, outsize in sound, personality and look. And she's a rapid evolver, discarding old modes as easily as adopting new ones. This hard and complex work has paid off: when she releases her second album, "Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded," this week, it will be as the most influential female rapper of all time.

What's even more striking is how far her reach extends beyond hip-hop. When Madonna needed to tether her current comeback to the young female transgressors of the day, she chose Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. (Savvy Nicki would never be the one to throw up a middle finger.) At the Grammys in February she gave the most shocking performance, part exorcism and part Broadway spectacle. And in the lead-up to her new album, out Tuesday from Young Money/Cash Money/Universal Republic, her new songs have shown that she has no intention of being hemmed in by the expectations of genre, d! abbling in slithery R&B on "Right by My Side" and outright giddy dance-pop on "Starships." When rapping on the songs of others, she's often the most capable emcee around take Birdman's "Y. U. Mad?" but on her own material she's often straddling a line between hip-hop and pop that no other rapper is capable of, or would even dare.

A few years ago, before her rise began, there were hardly any female rappers of note; now, a new generation, including Azealia Banks, Brianna Perry and Angel Haze, is rising quickly, working territory that she carved out. This is a story about influence, to be sure, but also about the weakening of old walls, and the reshaping of the gates that the gatekeepers keep. Thanks to Nicki Minaj and the possibilities she has laid bare, and to hip-hop's stasis of masculinity it is, outrageously and unprecedentedly, a more exciting time to be a female rapper than a male one.

She morphed into the most eclectic black-music style idol since Grace Jones, and certainly the one with the quickest ascent to the style elite, with a look that's loud, cartoonish and edging toward avant-garde. (Deep down, she's too much of a populist truly to go there.)

She's been on the covers of Vibe, XXL and the Fader, sure, but also of Cosmopolitan, Black Book, Elle and V. The current issue of Paper magazine features a modest Minaj on the cover: salmon blazer, lemon yellow top, Oscar-the-Grouch-green tangle of curls. Inside is a 16-page fashion spread full of models (sprinkled amongst commoners) wearing Nicki-inspired fashion: multicolored Afros, top-volume animal prints, neon makeup and shimmering fabrics, on both men and women.

NEW WAVE OF FEMALE RAPPERS

In short, emulating Nicki Minaj isn't difficult, because there's so much to play with. It's possible to take just a part of what she's done and come off as refreshing. And that's just what a new wave of female rappers has done. Take the bawdy Harlem rapscallion Azealia Banks, recipient of a heap of Internet affection ! in recen t months. Like Nicki Minaj she raps and sings, and plays with various accents. (Like Nicki she went to LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in Manhattan.) Many of her best songs have been one-off collaborations with electronic music producers like Lunice and Machinedrum. But despite the blog success of the lusty "212," she's still something of a curio, a situation that her new label, Universal, will most likely be looking to remedy.

It shouldn't be tough. Banks is effervescent and charming, and seemingly extremely malleable. Flexible in a different way is the Miami rapper Brianna Perry, who recently signed to Atlantic. Perry most resembles the main earlier model of female rap success, the sex kitten and gangster's moll poses honed by Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown in the mid-1990s. (There's even YouTube footage of Perry performing at a recent birthday party for Lil' Kim in Miami.)

But in the last year, as evinced on YouTube, Perry has evolved her style significantly, both aesthetically and musically. She unfurls her syllables in a deliberate, distinctive fashion and adapts her delivery well to the beat, evident especially on a string of freestyles over other people's songs: Rick Ross' "Stay Schemin'," Wale's "Slight Work" and, most impressive, Tyga's "Rack City."

What Perry is missing, though, is some of Nicki Minaj's effortlessness: She often appears to be scowling, even when the song calls for something softer. In a similar way Iggy Azalea, a white Australian woman, is stuck on one mood. She sounds as if she learned to rap for a part in a Movie of the Week: She's studied and awkward, an able imitator but not yet capable of more than that. Some of her rap moves come from Nicki Minaj, particularly the ways in which she tries to bend her voice into different shapes.

And Iggy Azalea, who signed with Interscope, has fully inhaled Nicki Minaj's skewed-Barbie aesthetic. Her videos are like small fashion shows, and Iggy Azalea, with her bottle-blonde hair and Jessica Ra! bbit man ner, is inhabiting her character fully. (The white women of the new bunch appear to be playing with visuals the most; in addition to Iggy Azalea that includes Kreayshawn, who is frail as a rapper but as a carefully pieced together punk-chola doll, was one of last year's more intriguing arrivals.)

ROLE MODEL

Iggy Azalea's look is a reminder that for all of Nicki Minaj's achievements, she's still done little to upend the traditional weight of masculinity in hip-hop. And traditional masculine rules still hold sway. Women are still mostly sex objects, and men mostly think of them in commodity terms. Nicki Minaj's music is full of reposts to this idea, but her image still often works within that old framework. Take as a counterexample Drake, Nicki Minaj's label mate, who offers a more emotionally complicated palette. But there has not been a flood of rappers looking to ride his coattails. His subtle challenges to the masculine ideal are more vexing to rap than Nicki Minaj's almost-complete rebranding of the female's potential.

The rapper who's best taken advantage of the sound that Drake pioneered at least by rapping over his beats is Angel Haze, a meditative young woman with a gift for starkly emotional verse. She's released a handful of mixtapes, the most recent of which, "King," features several revelatory performances over the beats from Drake songs including "Marvins Room," "Fall For Your Type" (a Jamie Foxx collaboration) and "Dreams Money Can Buy."

But where Nicki Minaj's influence may be most vital is on artists who ordinarily have no business rapping, but who see in Nicki a relatable role model. Certainly Amy Heidemann of the grim cutesy-covers duo Karmin has some of Nicki's looseness in her approach. The actress Michelle Trachtenberg was a viral star when she posted video of herself rapping a Nicki song. Last year Taylor Swift was pronouncing Nicki Minaj's "Super Bass" as one of her favorite songs and rapping it for people. And most egregiously there's Katy! Perry's recent butchering of "Paris," the neutered title of the Kanye West and Jay-Z hit. At this point Nicki Minaj is responsible for many children; some of them are bound to misbehave.

Barely a year and a half has passed since the release of "Pink Friday," the platinum debut album by Nicki Minaj, but her style is well honed. She's a sparkling rapper with a gift for comic accents and unexpected turns of phrase. She's a walking exaggeration, outsize in sound, personality and look. And she's a rapid evolver, discarding old modes as easily as adopting new ones. This hard and complex work has paid off: when she releases her second album, "Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded," this week, it will be as the most influential female rapper of all time.

What's even more striking is how far her reach extends beyond hip-hop. When Madonna needed to tether her current comeback to the young female transgressors of the day, she chose Nicki Minaj and M.I.A. (Savvy Nicki would never be the one to throw up a middle finger.) At the Grammys in February she gave the most shocking performance, part exorcism and part Broadway spectacle. And in the lead-up to her new album, out Tuesday from Young Money/Cash Money/Universal Republic, her new songs have shown that she has no intention of being hemmed in by the expectations of genre, dabbling in slithery R&B on "Right by My Side" and outright giddy dance-pop on "Starships." When rapping on the songs of others, she's often the most capable emcee around take Birdman's "Y. U. Mad?" but on her own material she's often straddling a line between hip-hop and pop that no other rapper is capable of, or would even dare.

A few years ago, before her rise began, there were hardly any female rappers of note; now, a new generation, including Azealia Banks, Brianna Perry and Angel Haze, is rising quickly, working territory that she carved out. This is a story about influence, to be sure, but also about the weakening of old walls, and the reshaping of the gates that the gatekeepers keep. ! Thanks t o Nicki Minaj and the possibilities she has laid bare, and to hip-hop's stasis of masculinity it is, outrageously and unprecedentedly, a more exciting time to be a female rapper than a male one.

She morphed into the most eclectic black-music style idol since Grace Jones, and certainly the one with the quickest ascent to the style elite, with a look that's loud, cartoonish and edging toward avant-garde. (Deep down, she's too much of a populist truly to go there.)

She's been on the covers of Vibe, XXL and the Fader, sure, but also of Cosmopolitan, Black Book, Elle and V. The current issue of Paper magazine features a modest Minaj on the cover: salmon blazer, lemon yellow top, Oscar-the-Grouch-green tangle of curls. Inside is a 16-page fashion spread full of models (sprinkled amongst commoners) wearing Nicki-inspired fashion: multicolored Afros, top-volume animal prints, neon makeup and shimmering fabrics, on both men and women.

NEW WAVE OF FEMALE RAPPERS

In short, emulating Nicki Minaj isn't difficult, because there's so much to play with. It's possible to take just a part of what she's done and come off as refreshing. And that's just what a new wave of female rappers has done. Take the bawdy Harlem rapscallion Azealia Banks, recipient of a heap of Internet affection in recent months. Like Nicki Minaj she raps and sings, and plays with various accents. (Like Nicki she went to LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in Manhattan.) Many of her best songs have been one-off collaborations with electronic music producers like Lunice and Machinedrum. But despite the blog success of the lusty "212," she's still something of a curio, a situation that her new label, Universal, will most likely be looking to remedy.

It shouldn't be tough. Banks is effervescent and charming, and seemingly extremely malleable. Flexible in a different way is the Miami rapper Brianna Perry, who recently signed to Atlantic. Perry most resembles the main earlier model of ! female r ap success, the sex kitten and gangster's moll poses honed by Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown in the mid-1990s. (There's even YouTube footage of Perry performing at a recent birthday party for Lil' Kim in Miami.)

But in the last year, as evinced on YouTube, Perry has evolved her style significantly, both aesthetically and musically. She unfurls her syllables in a deliberate, distinctive fashion and adapts her delivery well to the beat, evident especially on a string of freestyles over other people's songs: Rick Ross' "Stay Schemin'," Wale's "Slight Work" and, most impressive, Tyga's "Rack City."

What Perry is missing, though, is some of Nicki Minaj's effortlessness: She often appears to be scowling, even when the song calls for something softer. In a similar way Iggy Azalea, a white Australian woman, is stuck on one mood. She sounds as if she learned to rap for a part in a Movie of the Week: She's studied and awkward, an able imitator but not yet capable of more than that. Some of her rap moves come from Nicki Minaj, particularly the ways in which she tries to bend her voice into different shapes.

And Iggy Azalea, who signed with Interscope, has fully inhaled Nicki Minaj's skewed-Barbie aesthetic. Her videos are like small fashion shows, and Iggy Azalea, with her bottle-blonde hair and Jessica Rabbit manner, is inhabiting her character fully. (The white women of the new bunch appear to be playing with visuals the most; in addition to Iggy Azalea that includes Kreayshawn, who is frail as a rapper but as a carefully pieced together punk-chola doll, was one of last year's more intriguing arrivals.)

ROLE MODEL

Iggy Azalea's look is a reminder that for all of Nicki Minaj's achievements, she's still done little to upend the traditional weight of masculinity in hip-hop. And traditional masculine rules still hold sway. Women are still mostly sex objects, and men mostly think of them in commodity terms. Nicki Minaj's music is full of reposts to this idea, but her image still! often w orks within that old framework. Take as a counterexample Drake, Nicki Minaj's label mate, who offers a more emotionally complicated palette. But there has not been a flood of rappers looking to ride his coattails. His subtle challenges to the masculine ideal are more vexing to rap than Nicki Minaj's almost-complete rebranding of the female's potential.

The rapper who's best taken advantage of the sound that Drake pioneered at least by rapping over his beats is Angel Haze, a meditative young woman with a gift for starkly emotional verse. She's released a handful of mixtapes, the most recent of which, "King," features several revelatory performances over the beats from Drake songs including "Marvins Room," "Fall For Your Type" (a Jamie Foxx collaboration) and "Dreams Money Can Buy."

But where Nicki Minaj's influence may be most vital is on artists who ordinarily have no business rapping, but who see in Nicki a relatable role model. Certainly Amy Heidemann of the grim cutesy-covers duo Karmin has some of Nicki's looseness in her approach. The actress Michelle Trachtenberg was a viral star when she posted video of herself rapping a Nicki song. Last year Taylor Swift was pronouncing Nicki Minaj's "Super Bass" as one of her favorite songs and rapping it for people. And most egregiously there's Katy Perry's recent butchering of "Paris," the neutered title of the Kanye West and Jay-Z hit. At this point Nicki Minaj is responsible for many children; some of them are bound to misbehave.