Nicki Minaj is known for being risqué, not caring what other people think and for making some of the most popular music videos of all time (Anaconda, anyone?). However, she’s a great rapper, she makes any appearance in any song worthwhile, and people love her. Well, everyone but Mariah Carey, that is. There is something about the rapper that keeps people interested in what she has to say, what she has to do and who she is as a person. What we do know about the rap star is that she’s eccentric. She’s not afraid to don crazy wigs, crazy clothes and makeup that makes you wonder what she was thinking. For a long time, many people thought she was British because she used an accent. However, she’s not. She’s from Trinidad and Tobago. She was brought up in her early years with an abusive father who was on drugs, and she moved to New York City when she was only five.
Minaj attended La Guardia High School where she played the clarinet, where she was told she was not a talented enough singer to ever become famous and where she is no longer welcome to visit. Her first rap song is something she penned when she was only 12-years-old, and she’s always known she wanted to be a famous singer/rapper. Before she was famous, she was a waitress at the Red Lobster and she used her difficult childhood to motivate her to work hard to succeed. She wanted to rise above the life she had as a child and the life her mother had when she was growing up. She worked hard to perfect her craft and become noticed so that she would succeed, and it worked for her.
She’s become one of the most successful women in the industry in just a few years. She’s on record as having the most consecutive weeks on the Billboard top 10 for Starships, which was 21 weeks. She’s the first female rapper ever to perform in Yankee Stadium and she’s the first female rapper to top the Billboard Hot Rap Songs chart since 2002, which is a huge record and a really big deal for her. She’s had some of the most famous and most recognizable songs on the radio and just when you finally picked your jaw up off the floor after watching the rapper’s Anaconda video (check out the Ellen DeGeneres remix for a much less offensive and much funnier version), we remind you of the High School video she starred in back in 2013 alongside Lil Wayne.
Scenes Were Awkward
Despite the fact that Lil Wayne and Minaj seemed to have more chemistry than a high school chemistry classroom, the love scenes in this video were nothing short of completely awkward according to Nicki Minaj. She said the duo had zero chemistry, they weren’t good at making it look real and they certainly were not into one another when they were making the video. In fact, she has gone on record in the past as saying she’s surprised that the scenes turned out as well as they did. The two singers had to work harder than ever to create a scene that looks realistic, convincing and completely steamy, and it wasn’t easy for either of them to do that in front of the camera. Despite the fact that Minaj is known for her free and open lifestyle, she had a difficult time with the awkwardness of this particular situation when shooting the video.
There Was a Lot of Laughter
It was really difficult for cameramen to get any good shots of the two being intimate in the video because they wouldn’t stop laughing. Minaj and Lil Wayne have known one another a really long time, and they couldn’t even take a moment to be serious when they were trying to be serious. Apparently, pretending to be into one another was just too much work for the two stars, and they couldn’t keep it together long enough to get a good shot. It was probably frustrating for the directors and the cameramen, but according to Minaj, it was too much fun for her and Lil Wayne to try and shoot this video successfully.
She Wanted Birdman to Play the Role
According to the CEO of Cash Money Records, Birdman, Nicki Minaj wanted him to play her husband in the video, but he felt it would be too much in the video. However, he did go on record saying he would have loved to have played the part – we bet he would have. He said he would have loved to have done it, and he would have done it, if it wasn’t a video that was being produced by his company with one of his singers. He just didn’t think that it was appropriate, but he does wish he could have been the one getting close to Minaj. He did make an appearance in the video, but not as her husband.
The Video has Nothing to do with the Song
Perhaps one of the most interesting things that some people aren’t aware of is the fact that this video has almost nothing to do with the song. If you take the time to really listen to the lyrics, they have very little in common with the video that’s been shot for this song. The video is about a drug lord’s girlfriend who is set on stealing some jewels from someone she ends up falling for (Lil Wayne’s character) and it’s most about that. It’s the story of a jewel theft and its plot far more than it is the story that the song is telling. While it is a song that does have a little something to do about adultery, it’s not really the main focus of the video. The focus, instead, is on the fact that Minaj is out to steal the jewels and she’s going to get them with the help of some of her friends who are in the video to help her plot her crime.
The Video Was Shot the Day Before Lil Wayne’s Seizures
It was early in 2013 when the news announced that rapper Lil Wayne had suffered a series of traumatic seizures that landed him in the hospital for some time. He was very sick and suffered some serious health complications from his seizures, and it was unknown what caused them. Minaj has gone on the record saying she feels guilty and partly responsible for his health considering that it was the day before he suffered his seizures that he was on set with her all day long shooting her video. She even said that she was noticing that the rapper looked really tired and she kept asking the team of producers and directors to hurry up so he could get some rest. She had no idea what was to come, of course, but she did notice that something was off with her friend and she did have his best interests at heart.
She Was Carried Around the Set of the Video
This is one of those interesting facts that makes you go, “Hmm.” It seems that while the video was being shot, the rapper was carried around the set by her body guards. There is no real reason for the fact that they carry her around the set of the video, other than that they were told to do it, so Minaj let them. Really, the body guards carried her around the set so she didn’t have to walk around or go from scene to scene or to wardrobe or her makeup chair on her own. She was literally carried everywhere by the men that work as her full time body guards. This went on the duration of the shoot, and it’s something that doesn’t happen on every video shoot she works on. She’s not sure why it happened this time, but she rolled with it.
The Song is Similar to her Older Songs
Critics really like the sound of High School. They feel that the overall sound and the overall beat of the song are very similar to the earlier music produced by Minaj, and they enjoy the sound that made her famous. The song, when it was released, reached as high as number 15 on the Billboard Music Charts. It might not seem very high to many, but it was a good number for the song to reach, and about average for some of the other songs that Minaj sings. Since her sound is very personal and very much controversial, not all people like her music. There is a very specific group of people who do like this kind of music with the kind of lyrics Minaj is famous for, and that’s why it’s good this song reached so high on the charts.
Lil Wayne is a Gentleman
According to Nicki Minaj, she had to grant Lil Wayne permission to touch her anywhere before he’d do it. If he had to touch her cheek to go in for a kiss, he’d ask permission. If he had to put his arm around her to get a shot, he’d ask permission. Minaj said the shoot was long because he’s such a gentleman he wouldn’t do anything without checking with her first to make sure it was all right that he did it. She appreciated his kindness and his gentlemanly behavior, but she said it got exasperating after a while trying to get the video shot and having to stop every 30 seconds to give him permission to do the acting he was supposed to do. “He refused to touch me, he’s so respectful, he refused to touch me, and then I was like, ‘Wayne,’ I was like, ‘You could do this.’ But he was acting scared like, ‘You, Nick, this is my dream. I’m gonna be a man after this video.’ He was just being crazy. But if I didn’t tell him, ‘Yes, you can do this or touch this,’ he refused to do it, like he’s a southern gentleman, which people don’t realize,” she said of her co-star in the video.
There is No Actual Kiss
Despite the fact that the love scene between Minaj and Lil Wayne, they never actually lock lips. They come close to it, and then they don’t. They have to do this particular take several times to get it right, and Minaj says that Wayne wanted to kiss her, but they never actually did. “If we actually locked lips, don’t you think we would have put it in the video? Wayne said we had to kiss for the video. He was like, one thing that’s going to sell it is if we really kiss. I’m like, ehh,” she said of their conversations before filming of the video actually began. So it seems that the duo never actually got to kiss in the video, but you’d never guess by watching it that the two weren’t even close to it.
The First Live Performance
The first time that Nicki Minaj performed High School in a live setting was on the set of Jimmy Kimmel Live! The song is very explicit, has some pretty intense language and suggestions, and had to be cleaned up a lot to go on the air. Of course, all of Minaj’s songs have to be cleaned up (a lot) before they can be aired on the radio, on television or just about anywhere else for that matter. However, she was able to perform her song live for the first time to an audience of Kimmel’s fans and the late night talk show host himself. In typical Kimmel fashion, he had a lot to say about the song, and the rapper, but all of it in a very joking and hilarious manner. It’s hard to make that much fun of someone who has turned her career into something this successful in this short amount of time.
Photos by Getty Images
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