 Baw, what's up everybody once again, it's brand man Sean Ann. I got to talk about one of the oddest things about Nicki Minaj and her brand. And it's something that a lot of artist brands and just companies in general can learn from. Stop and think about how Nicki Minaj really hit the scene. She came up almost as like a street rapper, but then she really started to get notoriety as she ain't got associated with, you know, young money. Drake Lil Wayne. And then really pushed it to a whole other level when she came out with the monster verse. She stood out next to Kanye, Jay-Z and Rick Ross. Like it wasn't even close. You can go back and listen to it to this day, Nicki Minaj killed all the boys. But the problem is the weird part is about a decade later and Nicki Minaj still does not have a hit within the culture, a relevant song within the culture as a solo artist. I'm going to stop and let you think about it. Some people might have their own opinions and arguments about it, but she does not have a legitimate hit within the culture as a solo artist. There's a lot of great songs she's been on, like Monster, of course, one of them. She was on Yo Gotti's, Rake It Up, Trey Song's, Bottoms Up. She did Flowless with Beyoncé. There's a lot of songs that the culture, when we're talking about that core hip-hop culture love that Nicki Minaj was a feature on and even stood out in many ways, but she still does not have that solo song. The closest thing that she probably has to a solo hit that was kind of relevant to the culture is did it on them. But that song was really a lot more big money pushing it than legitimate organic hit. If you want to compare it to what a relevant hit looks like from a female artist, we're talking about Bodag Yellow, Cardi's very first hit. You can look at so many of the songs that Lauren Hill did, highly relevant to the hip-hop culture and she was a solo act. Outside of just being interesting in general, why is this relevant when we talk about Nicki Minaj? Well, if you look at the rise of Nicki Minaj after the monster verse and when she really started to get into album phase, it became really obvious that there was an agenda with Nicki Minaj's team to make her a pop artist. That was a legitimate goal. Nothing wrong with it. They were highly successful at it and you even hear me talk about in one of my old videos on Nicki Minaj's how that helped separate her in the game because she cast such a large shadow, it was hard for other females to even get a chance to catch up and be compared to her. She was just up here. She went from zero to 100 real quick but since she skipped the step of taking that time to really bubble within the culture by herself for a decent period of time, it kind of detached some of the culture from her as far as a catalog musically. She has that relevant image within the culture and they even knew what they were doing. That's why they strategically got her on a lot of features that were a little bit more street or hip hop driven and she constantly pushed this image of being kind of street or you all don't want to mess with me and I'm the queen and dressing very hip hop culture driven. However, at the end of the day, her music, the music itself, the core product and the way she pushed that brand was very pop driven. This isn't like oh you used to be a lyricist and now you made this pop song type pop. It's a lot more your core music is hip hop but now all of a sudden you're making this bubble gummy rap version of Katy Perry type music and of course there's no issue with that at all. She's had a highly successful career but 10 years later when people like Cardi B came out, you start to see some of those holes get revealed because catalog for catalog, Cardi B cannot mess with Nicki Minaj but that one space that she's successful that Nicki Minaj for whatever reason didn't accomplish is having a hit as a solo artist that's highly relevant to the culture, male and female. That has meaning when we talk about being in a niche audience and then scaling outside of that niche audience. If you expand outside of your niche too quickly, you don't have the chance to fully develop your core. Nicki Minaj and her teams did a great job at still tying it in where she's highly relevant but in most cases people don't survive those kind of moves. If you don't necessarily believe it, it was very obvious at a certain point when you saw Nicki Minaj make that left turn and stop being so pink and she had the project, you know she was wearing black and changed her hair back and she's not dressing all wild all the time. That was a strategic move where I believe the team noticed that, eh, all right we have this but we're losing out on some of that core audience. They're way bigger than anybody could be who's just right here but we still need this thing at the core if we want to be able to drive and have constant impact. They made that move and it was a smart move, very smart strategic moves but you have to realize at the end of the day when you make one decision for your brand that means you're not making another decision and neither one is necessarily bad it just depends on your goal. But as always I would like to know what you think about Nicki Minaj's brand moves about the fact that Nicki Minaj does not have a highly relevant solo hit as an artist in the core hip hop culture but hey you might have an argument for that. What song do you think is that song if you think it does exist? I know a lot of people might say that did it on them was a true culturally relevant hit but nah it's not we can argue about that in the comment section if necessary if I had to choose one I would go more so for once or more but that never got pushed enough. Anyway, other than that if you like this video hit that like button if you like your minds will share it and if you're not subscribed you know what to do hit that subscribe.