Nicki Minaj’s latest single, “Super Freaky Girl” has debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart, making history along the way. While women in hip-hop have made a resurgence on the chart in the last couple of years, “Super Freaky Girl” is now the first song by a solo female rap act to debut at the top of the chart since 1998 when Lauryn Hill’s “Doo Wop (That Thing)” was released in limited quantities making the song eligible to appear on the chart after initially being released as a radio-only single two months earlier.
Meanwhile, Nicki helped push her own hit to the top of the charts by teasing it on Instagram a month before its release, then taking a fan poll when the title needed to be changed for copyright reasons. Finally, after the single’s release on August 12, she followed up less than a week later with the “Roman Remix” of the song, which added another verse, and juiced its streams at the 11th hour to get her all the way over the hill (and past Harry Styles, whose single “As It Was” held onto the top spot for 10 weeks prior).
“Super Freaky Girl” is now Nicki’s third No. 1 single after she cracked the seal with Doja Cat on “Say So” in 2020, then followed up with Tekashi 69 and “Trollz” later that year.