Nicki Minaj - Hustle & Glow

Sitting pretty on the double-platinum success of The Pinkprint, rap queen Nicki Minaj is now giving acting and executive producing a whirl. 

 

- Julianne Escobedo Shepherd

Amid youtube’s endless bounty exists a clip of a young Onika Maraj, performing a scene in an acting class.

She’s doll-faced in a red T-shirt, jeans, and braided cornrows, but the part is mature: She is to argue with another student actor over the custody of her baby. As the scene begins, something clicks and she shape-shifts into the role, so deeply embodying it that she ends up hurling a heavy corded telephone at her cohort. Off-screen we hear it clatter to the ground. With that, the scene ends and Maraj is back, looking sheepish and a little startled as she asks, “Did I hit you with the phone?” Her teacher’s initial reaction is an astonished “Hoo-hoooo!”—clearly concerned for the other student but visibly impressed by the velocity of this young thespian’s ambition.

As most fans know, this precocious performer would grow up to become Nicki Minaj, and to even casual followers of her career, that intense gaze and unmitigated focus is a now-familiar signature. At just 33, the Trinidad-born, Queens-raised artist has already crashed through many a glass ceiling—she’s the most successful female rapper in history, for one, and in 2015 was