Jay Sean ft. Nicki Minaj - 2012

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Nicki Minaj aimed to make noise with her debut single “Massive Attack,” which was produced by Alex Da Kid (Eminem, B.o.B), featured a hook penned by Sean Garrett (Beyoncé) and boasted a Hype Williams-directed video. It didn’t quite connect with the masses, however, despite all the pedigree.

But then “Your Love,” a throwaway number the Queens femcee planned to sit on, was stolen and leaked to the Web. The result? Nicki Minaj became the first solo female hip-hop artist in more than eight years to score a #1 record on Billboard’s rap chart.

“I was not planning on putting the song out at all,” she told MTV News over the weekend on the “Your Love” video set. “But then I heard it one day, somebody told me it was online. And I was like, ‘No way, no way in the world that song is out.’ I went and listened to it and was really upset. It wasn’t mixed, it wasn’t finished, it wasn’t anything — I wasn’t gonna use it at all. But then radio started playing it.”

Soon enough, the record shot up to #1; the last woman to rule the rap charts was Missy Elliott with “Work It.”

“Isn’t that crazy?” Nicki said. “Crazy. I don’t even know how it feels [to have a #1 hit] right now. But it’s amazing.”

In the meantime, the Lil Wayne protégé is still working on her untitled debut album, which she hopes to release by the end of the year. She recently aligned herself with Diddy and is fresh off winning for Best Female Hip-Hop Artist at the BET Awards last month.

According to Nicki, though, she’s still rooted in the spirit of a newcomer and not letting success go to her head.

“Sometimes people see the glitz and the glamour. That’s why they envy you,” Minaj said earlier this year. “They don’t see three, four, five years ago. They don’t see when I was selling my mixtape for $2 on Jamaica Avenue [in Queens]. They don’t see when I couldn’t get New York DJs — I lived in New York my whole life — to even play a song. At the end of the day, it’s all about hard work. You clearly see that hard work; that’s all it takes. If you really want it, direct your energy on positive sh–, and it will happen.”

The Editors of Word Up! Magazine put together a FETCH tribute to Nicki Minaj in the August Issue of their magazine. Channeling Alice in Wonderland, among her many different personas; here are some of the amazing scans !

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DISS HER, YOU’LL NEVER GET A REPLY FOR IT

My diss record is my success rate, and how much I can charge to be somewhere for 30 minutes. That’s my diss record. The fact that I can pay your mortgage for a year in 30 minutes. That’s my diss record. That diss record makes everyone go ooooooh word nicki went in! That’s all I need.

NICKI ON HER SOUND

I want to be a balanced artist so its not gimmicky. What people don’t know is that before I was doing that craziness I was doing me, I was just doing regular sounding rap that anyone could hear and identify with. But once I started doing all that weird shit—im not mad at it because it got everyone’s attention, but I can sometimes forget that I come from a real authentic place in hip-hop. Im not someone who got signed to a record label who said ‘hey maybe you should do weird voices.’ No. this is all years of me learning me and my style, and decide to do something different that would get everyone’s attention. But I always knew I wanted to come back to my original sound, and the album is going to be a plethora of different sounds. Sometimes people close to me they have their preferences, their favorite Nicki thing, and I have to stand up sometimes and block out the noise.

BUSINESS DEVELOPMENT

I had a dream that I should go with Wayne and that’s what I did. I’ve never regretted it. Now…I mean I’m just a business savvy person by nature and I weigh out all my decisions. The average person hears $50,000 and jumps. I hear $50,000 and, you know, I need an explanation with it. I need details, and I’ll probably be like that about $50 million. Most artists at my stage in the game don’t have a business manager. I have a business manager. I’m talking about and looking over my finances on a regular basis. I’m not doing this to be flashy I’m doing this to secure wealth. Not cash. They’re two different things. I’ve made calculated decisions and people don’t always understand my process but they always get it later…I’m wrong every now and then but I’m usually right when it comes to things like that.

For more, check http://www.vibe.com/

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This post was brought to you by @daniibethebiiz. I am now an official writer for NickiMinajFans.com

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