Rap star Nicki Minaj has announced that she is leaving the music business because she wishes to make family life her top priority.
The 36-year-old Trinidadian-born rapper, who grew up in New York City and is known for her outlandish outfits, bizarre alter egos and fast flow, made a tweet announcement Thursday morning.
Earlier this year, Minaj was the first female rapper to officially sell 100 m albums and singles by the Recording Industry Association of America.
The New York Times once called Minaj “a sparkling rapper with a gift of comic accents and unforeseen turns of phrase. It’s a walking exaggeration, outsize in sound, personality, and look. And it’s a fast-moving, discarding old modes as easily as adopting new ones.”
“When I started to rap, people were trying to make me a typical New York rapper, but I’m not that. No disrespect for New York rappers, but I don’t want people to hear me and know where I’m from,” she explained to Billboard.
Her method mixed rapping and singing as she integrated into her act her British alter ego, Roman Zolanski, and Japanese character, Harajuku Barbie.
Before she integrated craziness into her performances, she once clarified, it was just “Doing Me.” “I was just doing a regular-sounding rap that anyone could hear and identify with. But once I began doing all that strange shit-I’m not mad at it because it got everyone’s attention.”
