In honor of the 7 year anniversary of the release of “Monster,” the groundbreaking lead single from Kanye West‘s triumphant 2012 comeback album My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy — which, yeah, is kind of a weird anniversary to celebrate — Nicki Minaj took to Instagram to post the story of just how difficult it was to bring the pop culture-shifting moment to fruition with a long caption attached to a clip of her verse from the “Monster” music video.
Aside from revealing that Kanye originally wanted to leave the song off of the album — which would have been a travesty, to be sure — Nicki also boasted that she was the first female rapper to perform at Yankee Stadium alongside Jay-Z and Eminem, and disclosed that model/aspiring rapper Blac Chyna portrayed Nicki’s double in the ghoulish music video for “Monster” due to their, ahem, similar physical characteristics.
“7 year anniversary of #Monster,” Nicki wrote. “Kanye called me to tell me Jay put a verse on this song & that he was still deciding if he would put it on his album. Haha. It was like an hour long call where I tried to convince him to let the song stay on his album. He felt this verse would end up being the talk of the album. I said: YOU’RE KANYE WEST!!!! ? I became the first female rapper to perform @ Yankee Stadium on the JAY/Eminem stadium tour. When I saw him, Jay said: “When you got so nice”? I said: “I been nice”! Ha! Kanye, thank you for being the genius you are. You always put others first. I fought you every step of the way but it worked out. (He wanted me to add more of that growling monster voice and I felt it was overkill.) He wouldn’t give in. In the end, maybe he was right. Ha! This song featured Barbie and Roman. Chyna was my stunt double in the video (due to her ASSets). Amber had spoken highly of me to ‘Ye [and] pushed for him to meet with me. The rest is history. ‘Ye, Jay, Em… All 3 of them helped me in some way. Love.”
Of course, Nicki’s verse was the star-making highlight of the song, kicking off her rise to hip-hop superstardom by displaying her dextrous flow and animated “alter egos,” proving that she was more than capable of hanging with the boys.
