Nicki In Rolling Stone

If you're going to blow away Kanye West, Rick Ross, and Jay-Z on the same song, you'd better bring your big guns. That's exactly what Nicki Minaj did on Kanye's "Monster" this fall, delivering a breathlessly careening, 32-bar verse abut brain-eating and money-making. "I pictured a little movie," she recalls. "What would this monster sound like? What if she transforms into a kid, then the Bride of Chucky, then a rapper from New York, and then someone with Tourette's?" Minaj's schizoid gifts (on display on her her debut album Pink Friday, out next month) have propelled the Queens native, 25, to the top of the hip-hop heap. After making her mixtape bow as no-nonsense tough [girl], she came under Lil Wayne's warped tutelage and uncorked her inner drama brat (she studied theater in high school), feigning accents, switching personae, upping the thrills. Asked about her status as a sex symbol, she balks: "I don't want to symbolize sex. I don't want to be sexy to boys. But if it's sexy to the girls, it's cute."