Nicki Minaj, in Las Vegas tour stop, solidifies reign as the Queen of Rap
From the start of her concert Friday at T-mobile Arena, Nicki Minaj made it clear that, indeed, she is the Queen of Rap.
Appearing at the top of a stairway at center stage, below an elaborately lit backdrop, Minaj’s opening song was “I’m the Best,” the intro to her 2010 breakthrough album, “Pink Friday.”
The song begins:
It was back in ’07, did a couple of tapes
Did a couple DVDS, made a couple mistakes
Didn’t know what I was doing, but I put on a cape
Now it’s, “Which world tour should I go on today?”
The answer, obviously, was her new “Pink Friday 2 World Tour,” which kicked off March 1 in Oakland, Calif., and made a stopover March 3 in Denver before landing in Las Vegas on Friday night.
It’s been quite a road for the artist since releasing those “couple of tapes” as an underground rapper. In its first week, “Pink Friday” sold more than 375,000 copies, the largest sales week for a female hip-hop artist since Lauryn Hill’s 1998 classic studio album, “The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill.”
Since then, Minaj has released four more albums, including the much-heralded “Pink Friday 2” late last year, her first in five years. She’s been a judge on television’s “American Idol,” has had roles in a couple of films, landed deals with Fortune 500 companies and released her own collection of nail polishes.
But it was her music that brought her fans — including many of her devoted Barbz —to a sold-out T-mobile, and Minaj didn’t leave them disappointed.
Changing costumes numerous times and appearing on a stage that dazzled with its many different lights, backdrops and videos, Minaj was a dancing dynamo for most of the twohour show. She performed new songs — parts of 16 cuts from “Pink Friday 2,” including “Barbie Dangerous,” the high-energy “FTCU,” “Nicki Hendrix” and the Tiktok friendly “Everybody.” She performed old songs, including “Super Bass,” “Roman’s Revenge” and “Right Through Me.” She added in a couple of covers, Kanye West’s “Monster,” and “Barbie World.”
She even included a song that, as recently as New Year’s Eve, Minaj vowed she would never perform anymore: the 2012 single “Starships.”
Maybe it was the lyrics that led her to include the song on her playlist:
Starships were meant to fly Hands up and touch the sky Can’t stop ’cause we’re so high Let’s do this one more time
In all, Minaj rapped and sang her way through a setlist of 35 songs. She was, at different times, sexy, playful, confident and grateful.
The crowd, it seemed, loved every minute — even after Minaj kept them waiting until 10:15 p.m. to start her set.
And what a crowd it was. T-mobile was bathed in every shade of pink imaginable. They danced. They sang along. They cried.
They were, in the end, loyal subjects to their queen.