The biggest compliment Kanye West gave Nicki Minaj
There was a time once when the names “Kanye West” and “Nicki Minaj” didn’t necessarily scream “political controversy,” but, alas, those days are gone.
Both Ye and Minaj have waded into the political sphere, with Minaj most recently publicly aligning herself with US President Donald Trump. Ye did so far earlier, while his broader views and espousals have descended to truly terrible depths. All of which is to say, Ye and Nicki have each become controversial figures in their own right.
But some years ago, they were just two much-loved rap artists that lots of people admired. The pair have worked together on a number of songs through the years, most notably on ‘Monster’ from Ye’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy and ‘Blazin’’ from Nicki’s Pink Friday.
Nicki once admitted on Instagram that ‘Monster,’ a track for which her rapping was widely praised, almost never made it into the world. She claims she had to beg Kanye to release it as part of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy.
“It was like an hour-long call where I tried to convince him to let the song stay on his album,” she wrote on Instagram. “He felt this verse would end up being the talk of the album. I said: YOU’RE KANYE WEST!”
She was right about her verse being a highlight, if not of My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy as a whole, then certainly of ‘Monster’ itself. People loved Nicki’s performance on it, which, as she also revealed in her post, was heavily shaped by Kanye.
She admitted that the “growling monster voice” she deploys in the song was encouraged by Ye, while she was initially resistant to it, believing it to potentially be “overkill.” But Kanye won her over, and, in the end, she did it as he wanted and the song became a classic of the 2010s.
Ye clearly believed in Minaj at this point in time, and, it turns out, he was very complimentary to her in person. During a 2017 interview with The New York Times, Nicki revealed something that Ye said to her once that meant a lot.
“Every girl I hear rap,” Ye apparently told her, “I can hear Nicki in her rap.”
Ye felt Nicki had been hugely influential for the female rappers that emerged after her, and she was thrilled by the idea. “I didn’t ask him who, but that was such a great compliment,” she said. “Because sometimes you think you is the only one that can hear those types of things.”