Culture | Music The first thing to get out of the way about Nicki Minaj’ s sold out Pink Friday 2 London gig is that she showed up. A low bar, perhaps, but it was not necessarily a guarantee. Last week, the 41-year-old Trinidadian rapper’s tour was thrown into chaos when, en route to Manchester’s already disaster-stricken Co-op Live arena for her first UK date, she was arrested in Amsterdam on suspicion of “possessing soft drugs”.
In typical Minaj fashion, she proceeded to livestream the whole debacle on Instagram, arguing with Dutch officials and being dramatically locked in a police van. After letting fans into the arena, the show was eventually called off at 10pm to outrage, but Minaj was released in time to make it to her Birmingham gig the following day. Where the scandal might have been a PR disaster for another artist, it is simply part and parcel of what fans – the “Barbz” – have come to expect and love from the chaos of the Minaj brand.
As well as being the best-selling female rapper of all time and a 12-time Grammy nominee, throughout her illustrious 20-year career, the self-proclaimed Queen of Rap has also developed a reputation for her firebrand and erratic persona. On stage, turning up late isn’t uncommon. And offstage she is garrulous on social media, whether it’s an hours-long live streamed tirade against fellow rapper Megan Thee Stallion earlier this year, or infamously claiming on X/Twitter that the Covid-19 vaccine caused her cousin’s.