With her most recent single, “Super Freaky Girl,” Nicki Minaj became the first solo female rapper in 25 years to debut at Number One on the Billboard Hot 100.
With her debut solo tune in more than two years, Minaj accomplished two significant feats: first, it became her first Number One hit as a lead artist.
The rapper has three songs to her credit and topped the Hot 100 twice in 2020, first with Doja Cat on their joint remix of “Say So” and then by herself and 6ix9ine with “Trollz.”
In the first week of its release, “Super Freaky Girl,” which heavily samples Rick James’ 1981 hit “Super Freak,” amassed a total of 12.1 million streaming, 4.6 million impressions via live radio tune-ins, and 89,000 downloads. On August 12, the actual song was released, after Minaj’s announcement one month earlier.
Lauryn Hill, a member of the Fugees, was the last female rapper to make her solo debut at Number One on the Hot 100 in 1998 with the lead single from her first (and presently only) solo album, “The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill,” “Doo Wop (That Thing)”.
Since releasing the stand-alone single “Megatron” in July of 2019, “Super Freaky Girl” was Minaj’s first solo offering. She has remained active since then, though, releasing four joint projects this year alone, including “Do We Have A Problem?” and “Bussin” with Lil Baby, “Blick Blick” with Coi Leray, and “We Go Up” with Fivio Foreign.
The 2022 MTV VMAs ceremony, which Minaj will co-host and perform on August 28, will honor the next winner of the Michael Jackson Video Vanguard Award. This was announced earlier this month.
Just a few days prior, Minaj had performed in Toronto at the historic Young Money reunion concert featuring Drake and Lil Wayne.
The rapper’s autobiographical HBO Max docuseries, Nicki, debuted later in the year. Her spectacular climb to fame in the 2010s will be followed in this six-part event, with a strong emphasis on the challenges she has experienced as a woman in the hip-hop industry.
