Nicki Minaj came to Genius on Aug. 15 for our Lyrical Queen event to break down her most classic bars with Genius' Head Of Artist Relations Rob Markman. During the discussion, she went into detail about lines from songs such as “Can Anybody Hear Me,” “Monster,” “Chun-Li,” and “Barbie Dreams.”
In the process, Nicki explained why she always writes her own rhymes, remembered why Def Jam wouldn’t sign her because “she wasn’t Lauryn Hill,” and revealed that she uses Google to help write her lyrics. In addition, she disclosed how she wrote her verses for “Monster” and “Barbie Dreams,” as well as the origins of her “all these bitches is my sons” lyrics.
“I think it became important because we were so conditioned to believe that girls didn’t write or girls had a ghostwriter so I had this huge chip on my shoulder when I first came in and I was telling everybody, ‘I don’t care. No man is ever gonna make my rhymes,’” Nicki said about the importance of writing her own rhymes. “I’m smarter than these niggas. So, it carried me through my whole career and if you ask any human being that has known me since the beginning of my career, they’ll tell you I’ve been saying that since the beginning, since my mixtape days.”
“I was basically talking to [Kanye]. You know like, ‘I’m gonna show you something.’ I wanted to impress him, so to speak, and show out,” Nicki said about her “Monster” verse. “There was a drought when I came. It was a long drought, for a long time. It was the rebirth, really, and that song was a moment in time.”
She added, “I did not even approve the mix on my vocals. He took other takes and put them together in one take because I did not want all those grunting sounds in one verse. I fought him while we were still in studio.”
“Google. It’s your best friend. If you want to rap, I think it’s very important to expand your vocabulary,” Nicki suggested. “I think it’s very important to be colorful in your lyrics. It’s very important to say shit that no one’s ever said before. We all said stuff that people have said before, but Google is my best friend.”
Watch the full video above and catch up on all of the lyrics to Nicki Minaj’s biggest hits on Genius now.
