In January, Nicki Minaj declared herself Donald Trump’s "number one fan," a public reversal that landed amid a string of high-profile musician endorsements and presidential pardons.
Nicki Minaj made the declaration as part of a series of public statements about Trump; she has also boasted about holding a Trump "gold card." The remark stands out because Minaj previously criticized Trump’s immigration policies and was particularly outraged by the separation of children at the border. Her early work captured a complicated relationship with Trump’s presidency: at the start of his first term she released "Black Barbies," where she rapped, "Island girl, Donald Trump want me go home."
The weight of the moment is clearer when placed alongside other recent moves in music. Several rappers — including Kanye West, Snoop Dogg, Lil Wayne, Lil Pump, Azealia Banks and Sexyy Red — have backed Donald Trump’s policies in recent years. Some of those relationships followed direct presidential action. Lil Wayne, who was arrested in 2020 on illegal firearms charges and faced up to 10 years in prison, posed with Trump at Mar-a-Lago days before receiving a pardon on January 20, 2021; after his release he continued to support Trump publicly and referenced him in music, including the 2023 song "Tuxedo." Kodak Black was serving a sentence on weapons charges when Trump pardoned him in January 2021; in 2024 Kodak released the campaign song "ONBOA47RD" and credited Trump as a co-writer.
The pattern extends beyond pardons. Snoop Dogg publicly thanked Trump in 2021 for a pardon of Michael "Harry O" Harris and later performed at a January 2025 pre-inauguration event billed as honoring Trump and calling him "the first crypto president of the United States," sharing the bill with Soulja Boy and Rick Ross. Soulja Boy described his involvement bluntly, saying, "they paid me a bag." And not every musician’s turn toward politics has been free of cost: M.I.A. was dropped from her joint tour with Kid Cudi after comments she made on stage on May 2 in Dallas — telling the crowd, "We can’t do Illygirl [pronounced like 'illegal'] because some of you might be in the audience."
Context matters. Minaj’s January comment arrives against this broader backdrop: a number of rappers have adopted pro-Trump positions in recent years, and some of those relationships were shaped by pardons or direct interaction with the former president. At the same time, the record shows Minaj did not start from the same place as several of her peers — she opposed Trump as recently as 2020 and had publicly criticized his approach to immigration and family separations.
The tension is immediate and personal. Minaj’s earlier opposition and outrage over family separation sit uneasily beside a declaration of fandom and the personal brag of a Trump "gold card." That gap mirrors wider contradictions in the music world, where political alignment sometimes follows personal benefit — pardons, paid appearances, collaborations — and sometimes does not.
The clear answer is that Minaj’s January declaration is, by the facts available, a public shift: she moved from vocal opposition in 2020 to naming herself Trump’s "number one fan" and publicly associating with the circle of performers who have backed him. Whether that shift will reshape her audience or political influence is the next story — but on the simple point of where she stands on the record, the declaration marks a change from her prior stance.
