A Music Superstar Took a Hard Turn Right. It’s Shocking—and a Long Time Coming.

Some of the Barbz, the infamous fan base of “Super Bass” rapper Nicki Minaj, have been mourning a fallen leader in light of Minaj’s recent full-tilt support of Donald Trump. What started with some occasional Trump-positive tweets on X has since snowballed into the rapper speaking at conservative conventions and literally holding hands with the president as his so-called “No. 1 fan.” Considering Minaj’s identity as an immigrant, as well as her fans, primarily Black, female, and/or LGBTQ+ listeners—all demographics that have been specifically targeted by Trump’s policies—her political shift has been upsetting to watch. It has even been protested and mocked by her industry peers, as evidenced by this past weekend’s Grammy Awards. During the opening monologue, host Trevor Noah pointed out Minaj’s absence, a remark that earned cheers from the audience. Naturally, this stunt resulted in yet another X rant from the rapper, calling the awards ceremony a “ritual” that will “backfire” because “God will not be mocked.”

As shocking as Minaj’s vocal support of the president may be, you’d be mistaken in thinking that it came out of nowhere. The rapper has been slipping into more conservative territory for quite some time now. In order to understand her final destination at Turning Point USA, let’s take a look at her history of increasingly controversial decisions—or, as I like to think of them, a cursed Hansel and Gretel–esque series of internet breadcrumbs—that brought us here.

Can you bring me up to speed? What exactly is all of this recent news about Nicki Minaj and conservatism and Trump?

For the past few months, Minaj has gone from confusingly unclear about her politics to incredibly open about her apparently now-unwavering support for the current administration. Just over a month ago, on Dec. 21, Minaj made a surprise appearance on the final day of the annual AmericaFest convention held by Turning Point USA, the conservative advocacy nonprofit co-founded by Charlie Kirk, appearing onstage for a conversation with Kirk’s widow, Erika Kirk. This appearance sparked some fan backlash directed at the rapper, who spoke to Kirk about politics and her thoughts on expressing Christian beliefs in the face of religious persecution, a framing that is commonly associated with Christian nationalism and conservative culture-war discourse. Most disappointing to Minaj’s large swath of LGBTQ+ fans was her comment on transgender issues, which consisted of her directing a (now-viral) directive to the audience: “Boys, be boys … It’s OK to be boys. There’s nothing wrong with being a boy—how about that?”

This apparent heel turn into MAGA-dom didn’t end there. Just over a week ago, on Jan. 28, the rapper spoke at the U.S. Treasury Department’s Trump Accounts Summit—touting Trump Accounts, a new IRA for children—where she said: “I am probably the president’s No. 1 fan, and that’s not going to change. And the hate, or what people have to say, does not affect me at all.” Instead, she said, the backlash only makes her and others more motivated to support Trump, adding, “We’re not going to let them get away with bullying him, and … the smear campaigns, it’s not going to work.” This is also the origin of one of the most cursed photos I’ve ever seen, featuring Minaj’s long-nailed hand grasping Trump’s discolored one. Additionally, she thanked the president for getting her a Trump Gold Card, a kind of visa for wealthy foreigners to help them secure expedited U.S. residency. The visa normally requires a $1 million contribution, plus fees; Minaj, who is New York–bred and Trinidadian-born, having initially entered the States illegally as a child, nabbed the Trump Gold Card for free. She even took to X to boast about it, using a meme of the famous horror character Chucky to accompany her words: “Finalizing that citizenship paperwork as we speak as per MY wonderful, gracious, charming President.” (However, a White House official told the New York Times that the card “was simply a ‘memento’ rather than a ‘visa document,’ ” a gesture likely of little value to the rapper, who, as a spokesperson for the Department of Homeland Security confirmed to the Times, “had been a legal permanent resident for roughly two decades, meaning she was already eligible to petition for citizenship.”)

Between this latest incident and the Erika Kirk conversation, there have been other, albeit smaller, moments. On Jan. 19, Minaj went on a homophobic rant against the journalist Don Lemon, calling for his arrest just over a week before it actually happened, when federal agents controversially detained Lemon and journalist Georgia Fort, who were both covering a protest against a Minnesota church. On Sunday, as part of the aforementioned Grammys rant, Minaj went full MAGA on X, declaring that “any Christian who votes democrat again is a fool,” alleging that “they’re flying in immigrants to vote,” and suggesting that the LGBTQ+ community should stop giving Democrats “the gay vote by default.” In a Wednesday interview on the Katie Miller Podcast—yes, that Katie Miller, wife of Trump’s anti-immigration homeland security adviser Stephen Miller—Minaj blasted California Gov. Gavin Newsom (whom she called “Newscum,” and with whom she has differed when it comes to transgender policies) and reiterated that she stood up for Trump because she couldn’t stand to see him bullied. Sure!

How did this happen? Was Minaj always a MAGA-head and I simply didn’t know?

No—the opposite, in fact. Though Minaj had called Trump “hilarious” in a 2015 interview with Billboard and noted that “there are points he has made that may not have been so horrible if his approach wasn’t so childish,” that didn’t stop her from voicing criticism against the then presidential candidate. In 2018 the rapper was even more vocal against Trump, evidenced by a June 20 Facebook post decrying the president’s zero-tolerance mass deportation policy that saw migrant children separated from their parents. In that post, Minaj wrote: “I came to this country as an illegal immigrant at five years old. I can’t imagine the horror of being in a strange place and having my parents stripped away from me at the age of five. This is so scary to me. Please stop this. Can you try to imagine the terror and panic these kids feel right now?”

Oh, wow. What changed? Did this right-wing pivot happen all at once or gradually? 

Seemingly gradually. Minaj has aired increasingly conservative-leaning viewpoints on X over the years. The first major moment that comes to mind is her COVID-era anti-vax stance. Infamously, on Sept. 13, 2021, she tweeted: “My cousin in Trinidad won’t get the vaccine because his friend got it and became impotent. His testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married, now the girl called off the wedding. So just pray on it and make sure you’re comfortable with your decision, not bullied.” (The Trinidadian minister of health denied this claim at the time.) Minaj went on a whole Twitter crusade about the vaccine, saying that refusing it was the reason she wouldn’t appear at the Met Gala, and shutting down good-faith responses about what vaccines can achieve, but later turning around and asking her fans which vaccine she should get, while also getting mad at political pundits for chastising her, somehow bringing Drake (?) into it, and more. (Yes, it was a confusing tirade.)

In a 2023 interview with Vogue, Minaj affirmed that she didn’t regret the vaccine tweets, saying more generally: “Every time I talk about politics, people get mad. I’m sorry, but I am not going to be told who I should get on social media and campaign for. There’s a lot we don’t know that’s going on in the government, and I don’t think it changes whether you lean to the left or right.”

OK, so maybe COVID changed something for her. She wouldn’t be the only one! Was there anything else that happened?

Most of the other incidents I can remember are more recent, like when Minaj publicly backed Trump’s contested claims that Christians were being persecuted in Nigeria. On Nov. 1, Minaj thanked Trump on X for his social-media post about how “Christianity is facing an existential threat in Nigeria.” In her response, she noted that reading his statement made her “feel a deep sense of gratitude.” Weeks later, on Nov. 18, Minaj was invited to speak on the topic at an event organized by the U.S. Embassy to the United Nations in New York, supported by U.S. ambassador to the U.N. Mike Waltz, who took to X to thank the rapper for “leveraging her massive platform to spotlight the atrocities against Christians in Nigeria.” In her speech, Minaj asserted that “Christians are being targeted” in the country, a claim seen by some as an obfuscation of what the BBC’s analysts maintained was a more general terrorist campaign against all communities in Nigeria, with people of different faiths being attacked. An official for the Nigerian government also refuted these statements, telling the BBC, “Terrorists attack all who reject their murderous ideology—Muslims, Christians, and those of no faith alike.”

That incident also marked the first time that Minaj directly and publicly aligned herself with Trump to this degree, with the rapper thanking the president for “prioritizing this issue.”

Anything else? You mentioned earlier some beef with Gavin Newsom, as well as other LGBTQ+ issues.

Following her vocal support of Trump, Minaj tweeted in response to Newsom’s admittedly fairly complex stance on transgender issues. Though Newsom did agree with Charlie Kirk on his podcast that trans women competing against cisgender women in sports is “deeply unfair,” and though he has vetoed some pro-trans bills, the California governor is also known for refusing Trump’s desire to ban trans athletes from school sports, openly supporting his trans godson, and claiming that “there’s no governor who has signed more pro-trans legislation” than he has—an assertion that the Advocate is betting to be true.

On Dec. 12, Minaj posted a transphobic tweet—featuring, yet again, a meme of Chucky, suggesting an inexplicable reliance on Chucky memes that we simply don’t have time to unpack—that read: “Imagine being the guy running on wanting to see trans kids. Haha. Not even a trans ADULT would run on that. Normal adults wake up and think they want to see HEALTHY, SAFE, HAPPY kids. Not Gav … The Gav Nots … GavOUT. Send in the next guy, I’m bored.” This earned Minaj a healthy amount of pushback from her largely LGBTQ-identifying and -allied fan base.

I don’t know how to bring this up delicately, but in the replies to all of these pro-Trump X rants you’ve mentioned, people keep mentioning Nicki Minaj and pedophiles as a sort of “gotcha.” Why? 

Minaj’s husband of seven years, actor Kenneth “Zoo” Petty, was convicted for the first-degree attempted rape of a 16-year-old girl at knifepoint in 1994, when he was also 16 years old. He was sentenced to 18 to 54 months in prison, eventually serving four years of time, and he is listed as a Level 2 registered sex offender in New York, a classification that designates a “moderate risk of repeat offense.” In 2021 Jennifer Hough, the woman whom Petty was convicted of assaulting, filed a lawsuit against him and Minaj in which she alleged that the married couple attempted to intimidate and bribe her into recanting her accusation. (In January 2022, Hough dropped the suit against Minaj, but not against Petty.)

Petty’s legal troubles didn’t end there. In March 2020, he was arrested for failing to register as a sex offender in California, and in September 2021, he pleaded guilty, facing a maximum sentence of 10 years in prison and a lifetime of supervised release. Eventually, in July 2022, Petty was sentenced to a year of house arrest and three years’ probation, plus a reported $55,000 fine. Petty had also pleaded guilty in 2002 to first-degree manslaughter, for which he was sentenced to 10 years in prison, ultimately serving seven before being released in 2013.

Another man in Minaj’s life has also been found guilty of similar criminality. In January 2020, Minaj’s brother Jelani Maraj was sentenced to 25 years to life in prison for raping an 11-year-old girl. Maraj was first convicted of predatory sexual assault and child endangerment in November 2017, following a trial of harrowing testimony during which Maraj’s victim said she was repeatedly assaulted by Maraj over an eight-month period at his home in Long Island, New York, while her mother was at work.

Minaj has remained supportive of these men despite their convictions. She has written on social media that criticism against Petty is odd because both he and Hough were teens and “in a relationship” at the time of the alleged assault, adding: “Y’all can’t run my life. Y’all can’t even run y’all own life.” Though Minaj hasn’t commented publicly on her brother’s charges, his attorney said that at the time of the trial, she supported him “100 percent.” Additionally, she has been dinged for collaborating with rapper Tekashi 6ix9ine on a chart-topping song in 2020, despite information having come out about him having pleaded guilty to the use of a child in a sexual performance in 2015, when he was 18 years old.

Considering the president’s own history of both sexual abuse allegations and a conviction, in addition to his known friendship with Jeffrey Epstein, a relationship that is being resurfaced as the Epstein files are being made public, it’s not hard to imagine a line drawn from Minaj’s aligning with men who harbor a history of sexual abuse to her support of Trump. Some onlookers have floated the possibility that Minaj could be cozying up to the president to seek a pardon for her loved ones, but that likelihood remains largely speculative.

Could this be another Kanye situation, where there are mental health issues at play here? 

Allegations that Minaj is mentally unwell have been launched by everyone except herself, the only source we can really honestly trust in that matter. Rap fans will remember when Minaj’s high-profile beef with fellow female rapper Cardi B first ignited in 2017, a feud that led to fisticuffs at a New York Fashion Week party in 2018 and has resulted in the two trading barbs (no pun intended) back and forth over the near decade since. Minaj has suggested that Cardi B was suffering from postpartum depression, and Cardi B has alleged—even recently—that Minaj has severe mental health and addiction issues.

Some observers have referred, perhaps unkindly, to Minaj’s infamous online diatribes as “coke rants.” Minaj has refuted the idea that she has ever used cocaine, and has successfully settled a defamation suit against a YouTuber who claimed, in a 2022 video, that the rapper was a “cokehead.” Though the rapper has acknowledged a much earlier addiction to Percocet, which was prescribed to her for medical reasons, she hasn’t otherwise confirmed any battle with mental health or addiction relevant to her recent social media activity.

Interesting. So what are we to make of all this?

Minaj is not the first historically liberal-learning woman of color adjacent to the hip-hop community to trade in her microphone for a red MAGA cap. In 2024 formerly feminist media personality Amber Rose made headlines for similar reasons. This shift raises plenty of questions: How are these tentpoles of hip-hop so vulnerable to slides in political ideology? Is it that these figures often come from more vulnerable backgrounds, or that there’s a sizable overlap between conservatism and hip-hop culture? Certainly, that Minaj has consistently battled naysayers to become one of the most successful female rappers—if not the most successful female rapper—in a male-dominated industry is proof enough of her hard-won battles. Maybe she’s seeking political approval after feeling attacked and underappreciated by the industry’s big players over the years. Or maybe she has simply changed, as have countless people since 2020. The one thing we can’t say is that Minaj didn’t warn us: After all, some would say this is “what a motherfuckin’ monster do.”