Nicki Minaj is back in the spotlight after a brief hiatus, and her return has already brought a mountain of chaos. Following a vicious online spat with ex Meek Mill and a massive controversy over a Rosa Parks lyric in her then-unreleased promo single, “Yikes,” Nicki has somehow fit a year’s worth of drama into less than a week’s time, but the Queen is choosing to focus on the music. After “Yikes” was met with major praise from ecstatic fans following its release on Friday, Nicki took to Twitter to interact with the Barbz, the name that her stans assigned themselves as a reference to one of her many alter egos, Barbie. Nicki told fans that she’ll be introducing yet another alter ego on her upcoming album that will serve to set the tone for her new era: Queen Sleeze.
Nicki went on to describe Queen Sleeze, indicating that, “She’s more calm but way deadlier.”
She also mentioned how her husband, Kenneth Petty, is “more afraid when I talk quiet then when I yell,” and that that’s “how he knows when I’m dead tf serious.” While Barbie appears most often in her music, both lyrically and aesthetically, Nicki is known for her many alter egos including Roman Zolanski and Nicki Lewinsky. During the same Twitter Q&A session, Nicki revealed that her fans and label “bullied” her into releasing “Yikes” after she played a snippet on Instagram earlier this week. “Yikes” will not serve as the official first single off her upcoming album, then, since she never intended to release it so soon. “It’s not my single, my single will be launched with a visual,” Nicki told the audience at the Pollstar Live Conference on Wednesday. “This is a setup song with no video. Please don’t kill me y’all. You guys asked me for that one.” Fair enough, Mrs. Petty.