Nicki Minaj Feels Pressure to Make a Masterpiece

When people question why the music industry is dying, one of the reasons would be the ridiculous amount of pressure that new artists on major labels face nowadays. Instead of nurturing a legitimate voice over numerous records, there's a ton of stock put into engineering debuts that create massive first week sales. As fewer overall records are sold, the hype machine picks up the slack and makes artists claim that their work is a masterpiece or classic (which is hardly if ever true). It leaves fans disappointed and makes performers appear delusional.

One of the most buzzed artists right now is Young Money's Nicki Minaj. In a recent interview with the On-Air Idiot Show, she discussed her first record and all the expectations that come with a big debut.

"To answer whether I feel pressure, of course I do," she said. "I'm a perfectionist and I want that to be, you know, I want this buzz to meet everybody's expectations, surpass everybody's expectations of the people that do support me. Because you got so many people that don't support you, but to the ones that do, they look at me and they see big things and I don't want to disappoint them. So to say I don't have pressure, I'd be lying. I do. I feel it all the time. I'm like, 'Yo, I have to make this a masterpiece.'"

Minaj has been working on her debut for over a year and its release is currently slated for the first quarter of 2010. She claims that the album should have universal appeal and combine all sorts of different genres, styles and features that will bring in fans from hip-hop and other forms of pop music. Minaj has yet to release an official single, but will be prominently featured on the Young Money compilation to be packaged with Lil Wayne's 'Rebirth' on Dec. 21.