Hey Look, It’s Nicki Minaj When She Was Still a Human Being (Video)

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What I love about this previously unreleased Nicki Minaj freestyle video - over the Terror Squad's "Yeah Yeah Yeah" for the record - is that you can just see the marketing geniuses over at Young Money putting in work.

She started as a Queens emcee with some obvious Biggie/Lil Kim/Foxy Brown influence, but then some manager along the way told her, "Name a female rapper who's blown up just rhyming hard? That's what I thought - you've got to be something more."

So she started to dress a little funky, and that worked. So she started to rhyme a little crazier, and that worked. So she started to dress even crazier, and rhyme even crazier, and that worked like you wouldn't fucking believe. And then boom, before you know it you're barely recognizable as an actual human being, instead morphing into some sort of marketing scheme, controversy causing cyborg that does shit like this:



Of course it's easy to say "I liked the old Nicki better", but the truth is that if the old Nicki stayed the old Nicki we probably wouldn't have known who she was at all. Still, I can't help but wonder what Nicki thinks now when she watches this. Actually, she probably won't watch it at all - she'll be too busy planning her carefully choreographed next "crazy stunt".

UPDATE: Peter Rosenberg weighs in on the matter.

See Also: Nicki Minaj Continues Transition to Human Barbie on “Starships” (Listen)