Spinning Nicki Minaj’s Return to No. 1 as a Win for Hip-Hop Is Dubious… but Doable (for her)

(December 19, 2023).  Any time a woman accomplishes something in an industry usually dominated by her male counterparts, it’s cause for acknowledgment and perhaps celebration.

Even if pointing out the achievement further highlights the worst gender disparity that any popular genre of music has seen during the past half-century.  

Yet that grim reality shouldn’t (and doesn’t) detract from Nicki Minaj earning her props as she’s accomplished something on the Billboard charts no female rapper has done in nearly six years. 

This week, Minaj debuted at No. 1 on the latest Billboard 200 (dated Dec. 23) with her new album Pink Friday 2, making it only the sixth rap album to reach the top in 2023.

But more importantly to history, it’s the first album by a female rapper to reach No. 1 since April 2018 when Cardi B’s breakthrough Invasion of Privacy pulled the trick.  For added perspective, there’ve been 77 No. 1 albums by male rappers that topped the chart in the 68-month gap between Cardi’s crowning and Nicki’s return.

Even more astoundingly, of the 256 rap albums that have topped the Billboard 200 in all of hip-hop history, only seven — seven! — have been by solo women, and nearly half of those are by Minaj.

(It should be noted that Foxy Brown also hit No. 1 as part of a collective called The Firm in 1997 with Nas, AZ and Nature.  Because she received a full name credit on the album, it is considered her first chart topper, making her the first female MC to get a No. 1 album and the only one — besides Minaj — to have two.)

Back to Nicki, her first two — in 2011 and 2012, respectively — were Pink Friday and Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded… a clear sign that the Rap Barbie should stick with variations of “Pink Friday” for her album titles.

Her three No 1s have all had those two words in their titles, while none of her four albums that fell short did (including three No. 2-peaking studio LPs and a No. 10 compilation).

Minaj’s latest triumph also gives her the longest span of No. 1 albums by a female rapper with 12 years and 10 months between her first and her latest (Foxy is next with just 15 months and five days between her first and last No. 1 albums).

It also moves Minaj up significantly on the list of all rappers with the longest career span of No. 1 albums, now behind only seven other rap acts (all males).  The table below shows the rappers who’ve had a span of at least ten years between their first and most recent No. 1 LPs.

That’s some elite company to be in and clearly entrenches Minaj as the most accomplished female rapper of all time, further solidifying her claims of being the Queen of Hip-Hop.

But in this year where hip hop took a big downturn in terms of No. 1 share — the six toppers by rappers in 2023 are the lowest for a calendar year since 2014 (five) — and with women continuing to lag the men, Minaj’s chart domination this week seems more like a personal victory lap than a win for hip-hop.

This is especially true in a year that from start to finish was marked by so many #HipHop50 celebrations featuring artists old and new, celebrations that were obscured by the fact that hip-hop was experiencing its lowest chart-topping numbers in nearly a decade, with several of the genre’s own ambassadors calling out the genre for its lack of innovation and the monotony and ratchetness in its lyrics and subject matter.

Female rappers in particular have been on the receiving end of much of that criticism for almost exclusively embracing “pussy rap,” popularized more this year than before by newer acts like Sexxy Red, GloRilla, City Girls and to a lesser degree Ice Spice and Doja Cat.

Even veterans like Megan Thee Stallion, Cardi B and, of course, Minaj, continued to embrace the raunchier subject matter, and defiantly so.  Cardi and Megan’s “Bongos” — essentially a 2023 variation of their No. 1 2020 pussy celebration “WAP” — flopped on the charts this summer despite being launched with an eye-popping $2 million dollar music video to promote it.

The lackluster “Bongos” chart showing has given pause to whether Cardi can repeat her 2018 No. 1 album success whenever she decides to release her long-awaited followup, while No. 1 status continues to elude her duet partner Megan Thee Stallion, who’s never climbed higher than the runner-up position (Good News, 2020) with any of her albums.  

Creating more of a buzz this year was St. Louis rapper Sexxy Red, whose “Pound Town” (and later “Pound Town 2” with Minaj) set her on a path to stardom with that very base, but famously quotable line: “my coochie pink, my booty hole brown.”

Neither “Pound Town” nor its parent mixtape Hood Hottest Princess were chart-busters (neither climbed higher than No. 62 on their respective charts), but the buzz Sexxy Red created with its brazenly sexual lyrics has made her a social media darling and touring headliner that has reignited the discourse about the one-dimensional nature of female rap and its impact on impressionable young girls everywhere, particularly Black ones.

Of course, critics of the critics have relegated any complaints about pussy rap as being sexist and misogynistic (especially if that criticism happens to come from a man), whether or not any of the criticisms have merit for the music’s narrow focus and negative societal impact.

It’s also true that female rappers have always been easy targets, with their lyrics and themes often scrutinized — perhaps overly so — by the same male-dominated industry that reduced them to being “bitches” and “hoes” in the first place.  

Women, long disrespected and marginalized in hip-hop, have now taken ownership of that narrative, commodifying it to a “baddest bitch” and “yeah, I’m fucking” persona — actually they’ve owned it for nearly 30 years, ever since Lil’ Kim and Foxy Brown (and later Trina and others) broke through in the ‘90s with groundbreaking, jaw-dropping classics that are still the sexual standard-bearers when it comes to female hip-hop — and men are having to reckon with the tables being turned.

So it seems that Minaj capping a year that many had already heralded as one the females took over in hip-hop (even if Billboard’s numbers don’t always align with that notion) is both symbolic and fitting.

So what if it’s just her third topper (out of seven tries) for a No. 1 conversion rate of 43% in a career that now spans nearly fifteen years, which is far behind her male peers like Drake, Eminem, Kanye West and Jay-Z (all of whom have converted more than 85% of their album output to No. 1 hits). Her latest crowning at least gives her loyal fan base — the Barbz — something to buzz about in their never-ending quest for Nicki’s validation (as if their own lives depend on her personal accomplishments).

Yet, in a year where hip-hop celebrated the first female rapper to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame (Missy Elliott), the 25th anniversary anniversary of the most celebrated female rap album of all time (The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill), and, now, the return of a female rapper to the top of the Billboard album charts for the first time in more than half a decade, doesn’t it feel like women are still just playing catch-up?

Congratulations to Nicki though on her record-breaking third No. 1 album, which you can listen to on Spotify below.

DJRob

DJRob (he/him/his), Billboard hip-hop chartologist, is a freelance music blogger from the East Coast who covers R&B, hip-hop, pop, rock and (sometimes) country genres – plus lots of music news and current stuff!  You can follow him on X (formerly Twitter) at @djrobblog and on Meta’s Threads.

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