Nicki Minaj turned down a record deal because it came with a ghostwriter
In the early 2000s Warner Brothers wanted to sign a broke young rapper from Queens, on one condition: someone else would write her lyrics. Onika Maraj refused. She built her following through Myspace and mixtapes instead, and later negotiated a deal that let her keep her merchandising, touring and publishing rights.
She was born in Saint James, Port of Spain, Trinidad, in 1982 and spent her early years with her grandmother in a house shared with 11 cousins while her mother worked towards a green card and moved to New York. At five she joined her parents in South Jamaica, Queens. She won a place at the LaGuardia performing arts high school, landed an off-Broadway role a week after graduating, and cycled through jobs including waitressing at a Bronx Red Lobster, customer service and Wall Street office work, losing at least one for rudeness to customers.
From 2002 to 2004 she rapped in a group called Hoodstars, already doing the character voices that became her trademark, and they even recorded a wrestling entrance theme. After they failed to land a deal, she went solo and posted tracks on Myspace, where a Brooklyn producer named Fendi found her in 2006 and signed her to a 180-day contract. He also changed her stage name from Nicki Maraj to Nicki Minaj. Her three mixtapes, from Playtime Is Over in 2007 to Beam Me Up Scotty in 2009, drew Lil Wayne's attention, and a bidding war ended with her signing to his Young Money in August 2009.
One verse announced her to the wider world: her turn on Kanye West's Monster in 2010, which Complex ranked the best rap verse of the previous five years. That month she became the first female solo artist with seven singles charting at once in the US, and the first female rapper to perform at Yankee Stadium. Her debut, Pink Friday, sold 375,000 copies in its first week, the biggest week for a female rap album this century, and later topped the Billboard 200.
Hits such as Super Bass, Starships and Anaconda followed. She is the best-selling female rapper, with more than 100 million records, and in 2023 Billboard and Vibe both ranked her the greatest female rapper of all time.
Source: Nicki Minaj
