Nicki Minaj believes she started ‘Stan’ culture in hip-hop
Hip-hop fans have always been loyal to the artists they love. Before social media even existed, avid listeners of particular MCs would queue outside record shops to buy their favourite artist’s project. Furthermore, they would stay glued to their TVs to watch their music videos. However, Nicki Minaj has recently claimed that she and her fans were the beginning of ‘Stan’ culture in contemporary hip-hop.
At Vogue magazine’s Forces of Fashion event in New York, the ‘Anaconda’ emcee stated that by giving her fans a name, she began a precedent and insisted that following her, everyone started coming up with names for their followers.
Minaj explained, “Before I had a record deal, my fans were making a moment for themselves on Twitter. I had already given them a name. When I started calling my fans the Barbz, there were no rappers naming their fans.”
However, she added that two musicians began doing this at the same time, adding, “There were only two people at that time, and I don’t know which came first — Justin Bieber and Lady Gaga, they had Beliebers and Monsters. That was it!”
She continued, “Now, every single human being that becomes an artist gives their fans a name. Even artists in other countries. Some of the African artists that I love, when I would look into them, they would have names for their fanbase!”
Notably, these two musicians were not hip-hop MCs, and she didn’t believe that the trend would catch on in the genre. She then insisted that her fans are superior to the “Hotties”, “Bardi gang”, and other hip-hop fan groups, unveiling, “I was like, ‘Woah.’ I didn’t think it was something that would spread to the hip-hop community at all. But it doesn’t matter because the Barbz are still superior.”
During her time at the Vogue event, Minaj was asked about her Pink Friday 2 tour and how it is now one of the highest-grossing tours of all time. Speaking about the dedication of her followers, Minaj emotionally detailed, “I feel very grateful. I have a very close-knit relationship with my fans, and they went very hard for me. Their emotion and passion always does something to me.”
The ‘Beez In The Trap’ lyricist told the moderator Eva Chen, the Vice President of Fashion at Meta, “I wasn’t expecting to have the highest anything, to be honest — I didn’t even know that I was in the running. But even if I didn’t have that, I would still be so grateful because the time that I’ve spent with the Barbz at these shows has been healing for me.”
In a post on X, Minaj recently acknowledged how far her fans will go to defend her, joking, “I be tryna tell y’all nobody is exempt. #ACGI ANYBODY CAN GET IT. It don’t matter WHO start it, the barbz ALWAYS finish it. I been doin this shit for a long time now & every time I ever tried to warn ppl that the barbz are different, they had to learn the hard way.”