Nicki Minaj spontaneously announced her retirement in 2019. And then went on to release a new studio album and 31-song compilation project.
Nicki Minaj, tired AF. | YouTube.
RETIRED?
On Sept. 5, 2019, the country was keeping a careful eye on Hurricane Dorian as the swirling winds skimmed their way up the East Coast. Michael Keaton celebrated his 68th birthday. The GOAT Serena Williams won a tennis match in the U.S. Open for the one hundredth time. And the moon was a waxing crescent. Nothing appeared to be too out of the ordinary. Yet, on this particular Thursday evening in the beginning phases of fall, “Mrs. Petty” crafted a post on her Twitter account, her long acrylic nails clacking as she typed away on her gold-plated iPhone 6 – a statement that left people in all corners of the world reeling, or maybe just Barbz.
“I’ve decided to retire & have my family. I know you guys are happy now. To my fans, keep reppin me, do it til da death of me, in the box – cuz ain’t nobody checkin me. Love you for LIFE.”
Nicki Minaj’s retirement tweet. | @NICKIMINAJ, Twitter.
Responses to Minaj’s announcement. | Clevver News.
Twelve years of car-blasting bangers, fire rap verses, ass-shaking videos and calling out haters on live television at award shows; all gone in four sentences and a unicorn emoji. And then, in an Instagram live interview with influencer Jayda Cheaves early in 2022, Nicki Minaj seemed to contradict her prior announcement, explaining the notion of still having “something to prove.” “I will never leave the game until the time comes when I want to leave. It will always be done on my own terms.” Minaj’s mixed messages are enough to give a Barb some painful whiplash.
Though she tried, Minaj didn’t end up quitting. In fact, she got even busier, putting together a new album and dropping back-to-back singles. So, what was that Internet- shattering, heart-stopping announcement all about? Was it a publicity stunt, as some have claimed, meant to build hype for what was to come next? Did she really want to lay down her bejeweled crown and retreat to a beachside cabana and live out the rest of her days with her family. Probably not. Minaj has spent most of her life trying to climb out of the pit of poverty, abuse and fear she was born into and dragging loved ones out with her. At some point along the way though, it’s like she forgot to pause, look up and realize she had not only made it out, but she is thousands of feet above the ground.
Even when she doesn’t always want to, she just keeps climbing.
Work-Work Balance:
From being the first female artist to sign to Lil Wayne’s record label “Young Money” back in 2009, the Trinidadian-born rapper was constantly under scrutiny and forced to prove and defend herself over and over as a woman in the male-dominated music industry. But everything in life comes with a price tag. And for Nicki Minaj, her relationships often suffered the consequences. Even her beauty rest was part of the tradeoff. “I don’t even get lunch penciled in my schedule,” explained Minaj, slumped on a couch at 2 a.m., in a 2014 interview with Complex. “Sleep is out of the question—everything seems to become more important.”
Minaj has long been vocal about her desire to settle down and start a family and alluded to wanting this specifically around the time she released her fifth studio album – she has currently released four along with three compilation albums. “After the fifth, I’ll probably have my baby,” said Minaj in the Complex article. “I wonder if I’m going to be one of those women who balances my child with a career. I always said, ‘When I have my baby, it’s going to be all about my baby.’ I don’t want the child feeling like they don’t have all of my attention.” Which begs questions about Minaj’s own mother and upbringing.
Teenage Onika Maraj. | needsomefun.net
Born in St. James, Trinidad & Tobago to part-time gospel singers Robert and Carol Maraj, the future star was given the name Onika Tanya Maraj. However, the young girl with bright eyes and dimples did not remain in the island country for long. When she was five years old, her mother had a premonition that her children were in danger of her violently abusive husband, so she sent them to spend the night at a friend’s house. That very night, Robert Maraj, a crack cocaine addict, set their family home on fire in a failed attempt to kill Carol following a dispute between the two. Soon after, Carol took Onika along with her brothers Jelani and Micaiah and fled to the Queens borough in New York City.
They were alone and starting over their lives over in a foreign country, which meant her mother was working constantly as a nursing assistant. She must have felt lonely – looking out for her siblings and wanting her mother there. Minaj’s comment decades later about motherhood suggests that she wants her child to have a different experience. But the question is whether Minaj is even capable of not working and staying home with her kids. Watching her mother express her love for her children by working tirelessly to support them for years ingrained the same principles and discipline into Minaj. Let’s just say she did not reach the height of fame she currently enjoys because she was able to maintain a healthy work-life balance. It wasn’t just that she wanted her mother to be around more. Minaj wished she could be the one to save the family.
Minaj with her mother, Carol Maraj. | @nickiminaj, Instagram
CAN’T STOP WON’T STOP
“When I first came to America,” revealed the rapper in an interview with Rolling Stone early on in her career, “I would go in my room and kneel down at the foot of my bed and pray that God would make me rich so that I could take care of my mother. Because I always felt like if I took care of my mother, my mother wouldn’t have to stay with my father, and he was the one, at that time, that was bringing us pain. We didn’t want him around at all, and so I always felt like being rich would cure everything, and that was always what drove me.”
Lil Wayne signed Drake and Minaj to his Young Money label in 2011. | Urban Islandz.
For a five-year-old in a new country, that is a heavy burden. One she never could seem to set down. As a young teenager, she quickly discovered acting as her outlet and was accepted into the LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. The aspiring performer began to garner a sizable fan base over the years through her mixtapes and hip-hop group “Hoodstars.” Somewhere along the way, a producer recommended remixing her name and, thus, Nicki Minaj was born.
Grinding until she was noticed by Lil Wayne, her workload only intensified from there as she sought to set herself apart from the other male artists, not only in the collective, but the greater industry as well such as Drake, Meek Mill and Gucci Mane. Her name is in circulation with Missy Elliott, Queen Latifah and Lauryn Hill as greatest female rapper of all time – the ranking order constantly changing depending on the age of the person you ask.
“Her focus was phenomenal,” said her former manager Debra Antney, CEO of Mizay Entertainment, in a Vice article published in 2014. “That bar is raised so high because of what she did and her work ethic. There wasn’t no partying, there wasn’t no drugs, there wasn’t no guys, there wasn’t none of that. Wasn’t no mess, she wasn’t on a bunch of meds, she wasn’t into drama. She worked.”
She worked and she worked and she worked. And she made it to the top. Again and again. But at what cost?
“I lost my little cousin to a senseless act of violence
His sister said, he wanted to stay with me, but I didn't invite him
Why didn't he ask, or am I just buggin'?
'Cause since I got fame, they don't act the same
Even though they know, that I love him
Family ties, broken before me, n***** tryna kill him, he ain't even call me
And that's the reflection of me, yes I get it, I get it, it was all me
I pop a pill and remember the look in his eyes, the last day he saw me.”
This heart wrenching verse comes from “All Things Go” on Minaj’s second studio album The Pinkprint which was released in 2014. Apparent throughout this album, an overwhelming sense of guilt seems to haunt Minaj as well as on several other tracks. Though her rise to stardom and sustained presence at the height of the rap world seem almost effortless as her flow, the price of success continues to bubble up.
The Marajs
Nicki (second to left) with her niece Kellise (far left) and brothers: Micaiah (second from right) and Jelani (far right)
“When you’re working and you’re busy and you’re successful, no matter what, something suffers,” said Minaj in the Complex interview. “Whether it’s your relationship with your mother, your relationship with your whole family, not being able to go to your brother’s graduation…. Certain things suffer and take the back burner, not because they’re on the back burner in your heart but because the world just moves so quickly.”
Minaj did not come up with that viewpoint and drive on her own. Whether we like it or not, whether its conscious or unconscious, children are impressed upon and molded by the actions and behaviors of their parents. From a highly impressionable age, Minaj has operated under the mindset that she must constantly perform and succeed to save her family from the horrors of her childhood.
The irony is she has had to leave them behind in order to do so.
LOVE & LOSS
As with any woman in the public eye, all of the ins and outs of Nicki Minaj’s various romantic relationships unfolded on the front pages of tabloids and on talk shows. Despite attempts to remain as private as possible, her longest known relationship with former “Hoodstar” member Samuel Safaree captivated many headlines over the 12 years they were together from cheating scandals, engagement rumors, abuse speculations and a dramatic breakup that was allegedly due to his jealousy over her more successful career.
Given her past, one may assume the woman who was forced to spend the majority of her life running from abuse and witnessing its effects on those she loves would do all that she could to avoid repeating such a relationship. But beginning her grueling career as a teenager did not leave much time for some much-needed therapy and processing. Instead, she channeled all of that pain, fear and motivation into her music allowing her to become “one of the most influential rappers of all time,” but also one who never learned how to take a break – as made evident with her failed attempt at retirement.
There was more relationship drama afterward, which received more than enough attention in the tabloids, but eventually Minaj returned to something comfortable and familiar – childhood sweetheart Kenneth Petty. The two first met while at LaGuardia High School, and even dated for a short period of time. Minaj tweeted about their teenage romance in 2019 saying “He was on my body before the big ol’ ghetto booty. Before the fame and fortune. Fought my boyfriend cuz I wouldn’t be his girl. He was always a lil brazy. But anyway, timing is everything.”
Minaj laughing with Petty. | @nickiminaj, Instagram.
The young love didn’t last long though as they soon lost touch with Nicki following the bright, white lights to Hollywood and flashing blue and red beams traced Petty all the way to prison. Twice for an attempted rape and manslaughter. Yet, Minaj apparently saw something in him that no one else did. When they got back together, she seemed swept off her feet from the start with a few Instagram posts that could have used a “viewer discretion advised” warning – one such post included the two in a hot tub with Minaj’s pedicured toes a little too close to her boyfriend’s mouth.
“I think I have what I was striving for, just happiness,” said Minaj on her Queen Radio show referring to her relationship with now-husband Petty. “It was so hard to get to a happy place. Now that I’m there I don’t want to compromise that for anyone or anything. Certain traveling things I don’t (want to) do it. I’m just enjoying my downtime.”
It seems she had found the one. The “Anaconda” singer married her felon Prince Charming a year after they came back into each other’s lives despite widespread online criticism.
“Okay, so he’s a killer and a sex offender. Well Nicki, congratulations,” said talk show host Wendy Williams. But she had finally found someone who knew and loved Onika, not Nicki. And for Minaj, who had put aside family and close relationships for so long, maybe this was the first sign that she was trying to change.
“When a person is with a n---- that loved them before they had a dime in their pocket?” she said, according to E! News. “How do you not understand that? How do you not understand happiness versus clout?”
The retirement announcement should not have come as too much of a shock – especially not when soon after, she posted a series of pregnancy shots on her Instagram account and gave birth to her and Petty’s son on Sept. 30, 2020.
Minaj and Petty with their two-year-old son, nicknamed “Papa Bear.” | Google.
FUTURE OF MINAJ
Her latest album was a compilation containing 29 songs, 6 songs with several celebrity features, and a broken Spotify record as the first solo female rap song to gain 100 million streams with her single, “Super Freaky Girl” – all in retirement. That doesn’t seem like the traditional maternity leave. From a highly impressionable age, Minaj has operated under the mindset that she must constantly perform and succeed to save her family from the horrors of her childhood. The irony is she has had to leave them behind in order to do so. From the public perspective, however, it might seem as though she has it all and can stop worrying. But her work ethic and schedule make it pretty obvious Minaj doesn’t see it that way.
The question is whether she’ll continue to only see two paths in front of her, going in opposite directions, – either be there for her family and drop the mic or continue to pull all-nighters in the studio and be career-obsessed. Or will she be able to create a third option, somewhere in between, some way for the Queen of Rap to finally find a state of balance, between her need for self-expression and her desire to be present with her loved ones. The switch from years of touring, recording, and single-handedly revitalizing the female rap game to motherhood does not take place overnight. It may seem solely like a personal choice, where Minaj may have to come face-to-face with her younger self and all she endured – maybe with a therapist too. But it also might be the reality of a rap audience with a voracious appetite that hasn’t always been kind to its female stars.
However, based on her latest career announcement, it doesn’t seem as though she see what’s behind door #3. She revealed during a discussion with Joe Budden last March that she is seeking to further expand her empire by building her own management and record company. After the release of her fifth studio album, of course. Just as she’s always expressed love for her family through unending work and financial support, this new conquest may be Minaj loving her child, and any more that may come, the only way she knows how. She is hell-bent on leaving her (Pink) print on the music industry and a legacy that will sustain and protect her family for the years to come.
But what will the cost be? In the interview with Complex, when was asked what her biggest fear was, she admitted “that I’ll become so consumed with work that I’ll forget to live my personal life to the fullest.”