Nicki Minaj is the stage name of Trinidadian-born American rapper Onika Tanya Maraj, whose online footprint spans mixtape sites, a Vevo channel, a Myspace page from 2006, and hundreds of fan-made covers1. The meme value around her comes less from a single image macro and more from a stack of internet-friendly bits, the funny voices she uses mid-verse, the pink wigs, the alter egos like Roman Zolanski and Harajuku Barbie, and the invented slang collected in her own 'Nictionary' app34.

Writer Jonah Weiner called her one of hip-hop's most unreliable narrators, pointing to the way she flips between accents, sexualities, and personas across songs like 'Brrraaattt' and 'Cuchi Shop'1. That shape-shifting is the meme, fans and haters both quote her voices, screenshot her wigs, and remix her hooks2. The BuzzFeed post 'Top 20 Nicki Minaj Wigs' turned her hair into its own listicle genre in April 20115.

The meme material typically pulls from three buckets, the funny voices (Roman Zolanski growls, cockney whispers, baby-doll squeaks), the wigs (pink, green, cotton-candy), and the slang catalogued in her Nictionary35. Cover videos usually keep the 'Super Bass' hook intact while swapping the arrangement, acoustic guitar for Karmin, kid-friendly choreography for Sophia Grace, so the joke lives in the contrast between the source and the singer6. Reaction and edit posts often stack her voices against each other to show the whiplash between personas1.