Young Money rapper Nicki Minaj continues her steady assault on the Billboard charts, moving up to the No. 3 spot on the Hot 100 with her latest single ‘Super Bass.’
‘Super Bass,’ Nicki’s record-breaking seventh single from her platinum-selling debut album, ‘Pink Friday, squeaked onto Billboard’s Hot 100 chart at No. 98 back on May 14, and has continued its surprising ascent to become the highest charting Hot 100 hit by a solo female rapper since Missy Elliott’s ‘Work It’ reached No. 2 in 2002.
“Nicki isn’t like any other female rapper,” Cash Money co-founder Ronald “Slim” Williams told Billboard. “We knew she had the goods when Lil Wayne signed her. She’s not a female rapper — she’s a pop star who happens to rap.”
Nicki’s single is just the eighth by a solo female rapper to break into the Hot 100’s top 10, following Missy’s ‘Work It’ and ‘Get Ur Freak On,’ Lauryn Hill’s ‘Doo Wop (That Thing),’ M.I.A.’s ‘Paper Planes,’ Lil Mama’s ‘Lip Gloss,’ Da Brat’s ‘Funkdafied’ and Neneh Cherry’s ‘Buffalo Stance.’
The multi-colored wig-wearing MC has already made Billboard history several times over, becoming the first female rapper to score seven songs in the Top 200 Singles chart, and snatching Lauryn Hill’s record for most consecutive weeks spent in the Top 10 by a female rap album on the Billboard 200 chart.
Though ‘Super Bass’ is Nicki’s seventh single, it is her sole top 10 hit on the Mainstream Top 40, and has sold almost 2 million downloads so far this year. What is perhaps most remarkable about ‘Super Bass’s success is that the song was only included as a bonus track on the deluxe explicit version of ‘Pink Friday.’