It’s the day that the Barbz have been waiting for ever since Nicki Minaj, 37, tweeted out that she was “retired.” The Queen made her return to the spotlight, and her comeback kicked off at Mr. Jones’ in Miami on Jan. 29. Nicki made a special appearance at the club to celebrate Super Bowl weekend, and she looked amazing. The rap queen wore a skintight gray jumpsuit, which she paired with open-toed heels and cotton candy pink hair. She posted photos to her Instagram of the look — WHICH YOU CAN SEE HERE — and in one image, she was joined by her husband, Kenneth Petty.
Less than a week before Nicki’s appearance at the popular hip-hop venue, she sent the social media-verse into a panic when she shared an image of the event’s flyer to her Instagram Story. Though the flyer didn’t explicitly say that she was performing, it was enough to get the Barbz’ hopes up. “#NickIMinajIsComingBack” began to trend, and fans were speculating as to what might come next. “@NickiMinaj has something up here sleeve, and I’m definitely ready for whatever is coming. I’m hoping it’s music bc I need some MUSIC!!!!,” one eager fan tweeted.
Nicki’s Jan. 23 Instagram story was her first of 2020, and the first major social media blip since November 9 (a day after she released her collaboration with Karol G.) Since then, it’s been relatively quiet from the new Mrs Kenneth Petty. It seems that when she said she was leaving, she meant it. “I’ve decided to retire & have my family. I know you guys are happy now. To my fans, keep reppin me, do it til da death of me, [X] in the box- cuz ain’t nobody checkin me. Love you for LIFE,” she wrote on Twitter on Sept. 5, shocking all her fans, who begged her to reconsider.
THE QUEEN HAS ARRIVED! #MinajInMiami pic.twitter.com/DlMLOnG5wv
— Nicki Minaj Updates! (@NM5updates_) January 30, 2020
She would apologize for the sudden announcement and for upsetting her dedicated following. “I’m still right here,” she tweeted a day later. “Still madly in love with you guys & you know that. In hindsight, this should’ve been a Queen Radio discussion & it will be. I promise u guys will be happy. No guests, just us talking about everything.”
Nicki further explained her actions while speaking with The Shade Room. “When I posted that retirement tweet, I knew that I still had music that I already had recorded that was still going to come out,” she said. “So the retirement was kind of talking about my album, meaning like, ‘Do I want to go back and record my fifth album?’ It was really about the fifth album. Where do I stand with it now? I didn’t know my fans would act like that with the tweet. It hurt my feelings because I feel like the way I did it was maybe insensitive to my fans.”
“But I didn’t think people were going to take it — I didn’t know it was going to be that big of a deal, so that’s why I deleted it,” she said. And now, she’s back, so Barbz can start speculating when and where that fifth album will drop.