Exposing the hidden truth behind Nicki Minaj’s fraudulent career stats, numbers and achievements: an educational thread.

When Nicki Minaj entered the music industry in 2010, the latter undeniably suffered from a lack of female rappers. As a result, it has not been a challenge for Minaj to crown herself as the self proclaimed “queen of rap".

While it is not up to debate that the Super Bass singer has produced some big hits, her career overall is very overblown and not as impressive as it may seem at first. Here is why:

Let’s begin with her debut album, “Pink Friday". Released on November 22, 2010, the album would go on to debut with 375000 sales during its first week of release in the United States.

What seems like an impressive figure at first is really just an average number in the year 2010. For comparison, here are some albums released in the same era and their respective first week sales in the United States:

Tha Carter III (Lil Wayne, 2008) - 1M

As I Am (Alicia Keys, 2007) - 742K

A Little Bit Longer (Jonas Brothers, 2008) - 525K

Soldier Of Love (Sade, 2010) - 502K

Thank Me Later (Drake, 2010) - 447K

Here I Stand (Usher, 2008) - 433K

Now let’s compare these figures to some of the most popular albums released in the past few years and their opening weeks:

Hollywoods Bleeding (Post Malone, 2019) - 489K

After Hours (The Weeknd, 2020) - 444K

thank u, next (Ariana Grande, 2019) - 360K

WHEN WE ALL FALL ASLEEP, WHERE DO WE GO? (Billie Eilish, 2019) - 313K

Invasion Of Privacy (Cardi B, 2018) - 255k

Evidently, one can notice that album consumption is not on the same level as it used to be 10 years ago. The music industry is facing a massive drop in sales each year. From 2010 to 2018, album sales have gone down by 57.62%.

Below are some official statistics to back these claims up:

The reason for this continuous downward movement is often linked to streaming. Even huge album sellers like Adele have problems moving units because of this.

1500 streams equal 1 album sale. Since it is rare for one streamer to contribute this much streams to one single album, units suffer from this. Whereas a person would buy an album in 2010 and be responsible for 1 sale, the same person’s 1000 streams are only 0.66 sales in 2020.

Keeping these numbers in mind, there is a way for us to adjust album sales to the industry’s state of 2010 to see how Pink Friday really fares in comparison to recent popular albums. The formula goes as follows:

Converting Units From 2018 to 2010:

(Pure Album Sales/0.4238) + (streaming numbers)

Converting Units from 2010 to 2018:

(Pure Album Sales * 0.4238) + (streaming numbers)

Let’s adjust the sales for Sweetener and Invasion of Privacy, both released in 2018.

Sweetener: (127000/0.4238) + 104000 = 404K

Invasion of Privacy: (103000/0.4238) + 152000 = 395K

And for Pink Friday:

375000 * 0.4238 + 0 = 159K (units in 2018-equivalent formula)

To put it simply: Pink Friday’s debut sales of 375K is rather unimpressive given the circumstances it was released under and easily stomped on by most albums from the streaming era once adjusted per the formula above.

Another stat that seems impressive at first but is rather just an illusion are Nicki Minaj‘s certifications. According to @chartdata, Nicki Minaj has 118M certified units in the United States.

This achievement is just a consequence of the fact that Nicki Minaj has released a total of 283 singles so far in her career. If we divide 118 Million by 283, we get approximately 0.4, which shows that an average Nicki Minaj song sells 400K units and thus does not even scan Gold.

Suppose fictional artist A has a total of 200 songs, all of which averagely scan Gold (e.g. all scan Gold or 100 scan Platinum and 100 scan nothing), Artist A would have 100 Million RIAA units from singles alone, but the respective songs didn‘t sell a lot, they just amassed.

For comparison, Katy Perry (at #4 with 113M certified units) has sold the same with only 103 total songs. Dividing 113M by 103 gives us approximates 1 million, meaning that an average Katy Perry song scans Platinum.

This clearly proves that other artists with a similarly huge amount of certified units actually sell well to achieve it, meanwhile Nicki Minaj achieved it by releasing an excessive amount of songs.

Minaj has a total of 112 Billboard Hot 100 entries, only topped by one single female artist: Taylor Swift‘s 113 entries.

Just like her certified units, this is just due to her extremely high amount of songs released. On average, Nicki releases 283/10 = 28.3 songs per year. The probability that one of those charts is only (112/283) * 100 = 39,5%. Consequently, she has 65 songs that failed to chart.

The majority of her chart entries chart below the Top 40 for one week and then leave the charts. Because of that, it is fatally wrong to assume that the quantities of her chart entries correlates to the quantity of her actual hit songs.

Besides that, Nicki Minaj is notoriously known for her lack of longevity and her unmatched freefalls on the Billboard Hot 100. It is safe to say that there is no modern mainstream act with poorer longevity than Minaj, as most of her entries don't even manage to chart for 2 weeks.

Below is a collection of some Nicki Minaj songs and their freefalls between two respective tracking weeks.

In July 2020, Nicki Minaj released the song ''Move Ya Hips'' with ASAP Ferg and Made In TYO. After an excessive campaign to buy the song fueled by both Nicki and her fans, it debuted at #19 on the Hot 100, a disappointing number compared to the #1 debut her fans were expecting.

In its second week, Move Ya Hips fell a whopping 80 spots on the chart, going from #19 to #99. This is the biggest freefall for any song on the charts in America's history, an unprecedented feat even for Nicki herself, who had previously experienced many harsh freefalls.

Fans were quick to make up reasons as to why this happened, falsely claiming that ASAP Ferg had not submitted any website sales, when in fact he later confirmed he did submit them.

The reason for this is evident but blatantly ignored by her fans. There is NO demand for Nicki music outside of her fanbase. They spend all their money on mass buying the song for it to achieve a high peak but the lack of organic demand by the general public causes the freefall.

This lack of demand for her music is also reflected in the fact that Nicki's last #1 album was in 2012, 8 years ago. When her latest album Queen debuted at #2 behind Travis Scott's Astroworld's second week, an insecure Minaj took it all but easy.

Nicki blamed everyone for the album's underperformance, from Spotify's alleged lack of promotion to Apple Music, Kylie Jenner, Travis Scott and even their newborn Stormi Webster, who was 6 months old at the time.

She was especially mad at Travis Scott for selling merch bundles, which was very hypocritical cause she did the exact same thing and both albums had their sales boosted by bundles as confirmed by Billboard. The truth is they played the same game, but Travis beat her at it.

Since then 2 years have passed and Minaj has gained 2 #1 songs on the Billboard Hot 100. For her fans, this is a sure sign that the
Anaconda singer is bouncing back to her old commercial power but in reality, they just add onto the list of her commercial failures.

Nicki gained her first #1 in May 2020 with the remix of Doja Cat's solo hit song ''Say So''. Desperate for a hit, she jumped on the remix when the song peaked with a massive radio audience of 142M.

Her and Doja released 5 versions of the same song:

Say So
Say So (Remix) [Explicit]
Say So (Remix) [Clean]
Say So (Original Remix) [Explicit]
Say So (Original Remix) [Clean]

Additionally, they released vinyls, signed CDs and Merch to get the #1.

All these gimmicks ensured the #1 but couldn't stop the remix from being a commercial underperformance regardless.Nicki's credit on the song was removed after 2 weeks, giving the song the chart run #1-#2-OUT. It failed to scan any certification and won't make the Year End Chart.

It did not take long for Say So (Remix) to replaced as the worst-performing #1 in Billboard history. A month later in June 2020, Nicki collaborated with her long time friend and convicted s*x offender 6ix9ine on the track ''Trollz'' and the fraudulence hit new heights.

Upon release, all four versions of TROLLZ were discounted to $0.69. Additionally, the song had a video, a lyric video, and a lyric video for its alternative version in its first week.

It does not stop there. The song also came with an ENORMOUS amount of bundles, probably the most for any song in history. From facemasks to cassettes, t-shirts, and pants, Nicki and 6ix9ine bundled their song with every object ever invented by mankind.

The desperation is not over yet. Nicki and 6ix9ine offered a total of $16000 for TikTok users who would use TROLLZ in one of their videos in order to make it go viral on the platform, which failed.

It gets even worse. Youtube has officially confirmed that Nicki and 6ix9ine had used paid advertising to boost their views in order to debut at #1, thus disqualifying the song from any 24-hour records.

After all of these fraudulent tactics, Nicki and 6ix9ine had achieved what they so desperately wanted: TROLLZ debuted at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Regardless, the celebrations were very shortlived as the song would drop an embarrassing 33 spots in its second week to #34.

This is the biggest drop for any #1 debut in the history of Billboard. The song spent only 1 week in the Top 30 of Billboard. Additionally, the song left the charts after only four weeks, by far the shortest charting #1 song in history.

Minaj fans like to justify this by saying the song got no radio play or playlisting, but this excuse does not work. For comparison: ''I Do'' by Cardi B and ''exile'' by Taylor Swift are both album tracks that were not sent to radio or on playlists and both charted for 5 weeks.

TROLLZ has so only accumulated 706 total points on the Billboard Hot 100 after 3 months of release. This number is embarrassingly bad and the lowest for a #1 song in music history. For comparison, ''WAP'' by Cardi B and Megan Thee Stallion accumulated 915 points in one week.

Consequently, the song - like the Say So Remix - will not enter 2020's Year End Chart. At this point I'd like to tag @billboard and say that it is absolutely ridiculous that there are #1 songs who chart 1 week in the Top 30, 4 weeks in total and fail to enter the Year End Chart.

This goes to show that Nicki Minaj's #1 songs are the commercial equivalent of any artists' #40 peaking songs at best. She found a loophole in Billboard's rules and got her fans to abuse it, yet she has not produced a real hit on her own since the Obama Administration.

There are many many points I could have discussed in this thread. How she is not blackballed as her fans like to claim, how Super Bass is not eligible for Diamond, how Cardi B's career stats are undeniably more impressive than hers, but those should be the most important points.

Yes, Nicki Minaj has without a doubt been the face of female rap for many years (due to lack of competition). I am in no way denying this, however, it would be equally delusional to ignore the fact that she statistically fell off and times have changed.

If you‘ve reached this far, I want to remind you that Tones and I just released the SOTY, a remix of her smash hit uR sO f*****g cOoL with Blackbear! Stream: https://open.spotify.com/track/5g29XPi9bGxZYcdvyyO2vb?si=xXtLrzdvTTGwl_1ZY8EPnQ

I want to thank @LilUziVertXYZ for coming up with the formula for adjusting sales from 2018 to 2010 and @scorpionoutsoId @ctrldexter @bardiiiibackup @hausfadga for sending me receipts and overall helping with this thread.

By the way if you see any "screenshots" of me saying racial slurs just know that it‘s fake, I have never ever in my entire life said a single racial slur. It‘s so obvious photoshop and Garbz can only resort to editing pictures when they should be streaming their fav‘s music