Living her life to the full: Nicki Minaj talks ahead of Birmingham show

Her tour will now feature Chicago rapper Juice WRLD, who is replacing Future on tour.

Juice WRLD has had a breakout phase with a platinum-selling debut album Goodbye & Good Riddance, and multi-platinum selling singles All Girls Are the Same and Lucid Dreams.

But the show is all about Minaj, who lives life to the full with a £388,000 car that has its own champagne fridge.

Minaj has enjoyed a remarkable career, having been born in Saint James, Port of Spain, Trinidad and Tobago and raised in Queens, New York City. She gained public recognition after releasing the mixtapes Playtime Is Over (2007), Sucka Free (2008), and Beam Me Up Scotty (2009).

And she’s gone on to become one of the biggest stars in the world. Her first studio album, Pink Friday (2010), which peaked at number one on the US Billboard 200 and was ultimately certified triple platinum by the Recording Industry Association of America (RIAA). Her sophomore album, Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, was released in 2012 and debuted at number one in several countries. In 2013, she was a judge on the twelfth season of American Idol. Minaj’s third studio album, The Pinkprint, was released in 2014 and her fourth studio album, Queen, was released in 2018.

She’s become one of the most influential female rap artists of all time and has received numerous accolades, including six American Music Awards, 11 BET Awards, four MTV Video Music Awards, four Billboard Music Awards, a Billboard Women in Music Rising Star Award, and 10 Grammy Award nominations. In total, Minaj has sold 20 million singles as a lead artist, 60 million singles as a featured artist, and over five million albums worldwide, making her one of the world’s best-selling music artists.

But living life in the spotlight hasn’t been easy and she’s been embroiled in a number of controversies, not least surrounding her relationship with long-time partner, rapper Safaree. He claimed he’d co-written a lot of Minaj’s songs, a claim she denied.

“I’ve always been adamant that I’ve always written my own raps and I want all women to write their own raps.”

Minaj recently opened up to Vogue Arabia, sharing her thoughts on music, fashion and more besides. She told them she’d waited a long time to release her latest album because there was so much going on.

“To be honest, I had a very rough time with my previous relationship. It snapped me out of my career. Then I came to my senses, snapped back in like a queen does and got back to it. Everything I learned in those few years made me so much stronger as a woman, but also a more spiritual person and a better writer.”

The rapper keeps in touch with her fans directly, communicating to 90 million people via Instagram. “I felt the pressure from my fans, and there’s this burning desire inside of me to continue to create and to entertain people. I was always thinking that I had to go back on tour to enjoy that special energy that comes from performing around the globe but for it to happen, I had to give them another album.”

She’s found it tough to focus at times, however, because of the pressures of fame.

“I think that anybody who says they don’t care about the horrible things being said about them or lies being spread, is not being truthful. I’m a human being and, yes, of course it bothers me when I read horrendous things about myself (on social media).

“When I’m in the studio, I can’t be constantly looking at my phone and, to be honest, I really don’t care what other people are doing. When it’s time for me to do what I need to do, I know I’m going to be the best, and that’s a fact. I took time to myself to create something for my fans that I was sure was going to be perfection. And when I came back online I was like, ‘I didn’t miss it that much'.”

Minaj officially announced her fourth album, Queen, on the red carpet at the 2018 Met Gala; the album was scheduled to be released on June 15, 2018.

In early June 2018, Minaj released the cover art for the album on Twitter, shot by Mert and Marcus, which features Minaj topless, wearing pasties, with a Cleopatra-inspired head-dress and revealed that her next tour would be a double-header with rapper Future.

Minaj pushed back Queen to August 10 and the day before the release of the album, Minaj launched her own Beats 1 radio show, Queen Radio. Queen debuted at number two on the US Billboard 200 with 185,000 album-equivalent units, of which 78,000 came from pure album sales. It also debuted at number five in the UK and at number four in Australia, marking the highest debut of Minaj’s career in the latter country.

Upon debuting second on the Billboard 200, Minaj expressed frustration and criticized several people in a series of tweets, including Travis Scott, whose album Astroworld claimed the top spot for a second week in a row, blocking Queen from number one. Queen’s roll-out and the ensuing controversy was criticized by several news outlets and commentators.