Nicki Minaj’s record-breaking Pink Friday 2 World Tour returns to NY this fall

By Erick Diaz

Nicki Minaj cemented her undeniable hip-hop icon status after having the highest grossing rap tour for a woman. The Pink Friday 2 World Tour marks Minaj’s first U.S. tour since The Pink Print Tour in 2015 and the artist recently announced a second leg of her North America tour, starting in September 2024.

The Queen of Rap’s sold-out, third NYC show on Wednesday May 1^st at the Barclays Center was epic. Wearing pink wigs, pink outfits, and even recreating some of Minaj’s iconic looks throughout her career, Nicki’s Barbz were more than ready to see their queen hit the Barclays stage.

The show kicked off with Minaj’s personal DJ, the infamous DJ Boof playing Minaj’s most iconic features from Big Bank to Up All Night, but also played a variety of genres such as pop, R&B, and Latin, getting the Barbz hyped before the queen graced the stage. But what some may see as a “filler” section, Boof’s setlist is important, as he plays most of the songs that Nicki will not perform, letting the audience experience a good mix of Nicki’s catalogue in Gag City.

At around 10:45 PM, the lights went off as it was finally time for Nicki to take Brooklyn to Gag City. Minaj opened the show with I’m The Best, the opening song of her debut LP, Pink Friday. The arrangement for the live version of the song made the audience feel like they were back in 2010 when the album first dropped, but this is the Pink Friday 2 Tour, so we quickly go into Barbie Dangerous, where Minaj does the first quick change of the night and starts going down the stairs while joined by her dancers.

The smash hit FTCU dropped right after Barbie Dangerous, quickly grabbing everyone’s attention. Surely Nicki’s line “high heels on my tippies” was heard in the star’s home country of Trinidad & Tobago, due to how loud the audience got during the song. Minaj finished off the first act with the explosive Big Difference which contains elements of the 2012 hit Beez in The Trap.

After another change, Minaj returned to the stage to perform her “sexy songs,” beginning with Pink Birthday. During this act, Minaj got everyone in the audience “gagging” over her explicit dances wearing a black body suit and had more than one questioning their relationship choices while performing RNB.

But the most creative part of the show came in the third act, where Minaj brought out five doll boxes that contained each of her most famous alter egos, going from Harajuku to Chun Li to Red Ruby to Barbie to the iconic Roman Zolanski. Each alter ego got their own outfit and at times, their own wig. Though the Barbz were hyped for every alter ego, nothing could’ve prepared me for the arena’s reaction to “I am not Jasmine, I am Aladdin.” There is a special energy around Roman that makes everyone go wild every time Minaj performs that song. Right after Roman’s Revenge, Minaj leaves out the Barbie and Roman boxes to perform her legendary Monster verse, giving us one more time, the iconic battle between her two famous alter egos. The stage changes to pink during Barbie’s lines and to green during Roman’s, making us relive the music video.

Onika took the stage for act four and left Nicki Minaj behind, performing her most personal songs such as Save Me and Here I Am, both bringing the audience to tears (including myself). Nicki Minaj has always been a diverse artist, and only she can take Gag City from “pull up in a monster automobile gangster” to “why is it that you could only see worst in me?” in the span of five minutes. After Minaj left the stage, R&B superstar Monica appeared and performed a ten-minute set.

The Gag City train finally arrived at the Barclays Center and opened to a leopard Minaj performing her historic Billboard Hot 100 number one, Super Freaky Girl, and quickly transitioned into the global hit Anaconda. But the “gaggiest” moment of the night is not the fact that Nicki can still ace the Anaconda choreography but is when Minaj performed Pink Friday Girls after not being in the setlist for nearly a month. And out of nowhere, pop icon Cyndi Lauper joined her on stage for a sweet performance. Nicki took a moment to give Cyndi her flowers and said, “Don’t wait until we are gone to give us our flowers.”

The show continued with smash hits, Super Bass, The Night Is Still Young (and in case you were wondering, the mic did not get snatched), Moment 4 Life, Starships, and finishing with Everybody while joined by Twitch star Kai Cenat.

Experiencing Gag City is life changing. Nicki performed for two hours, the longest show of her career thus far. Minaj opted for not performing any of her features (besides Monster) on this tour and showed that her own catalogue is strong enough sell out arenas around the country.

After seeing the pink sea in Barclays Center, it is safe to say that she is indeed number one and the rest are going to have to argue over the next four.

And yes, I already bought my ticket for the October 11th show at UBS.