During their performance at Rolling Loud California on Saturday night, Nicki Minaj and Lil Wayne posed for photos with Street Cred DJ Skeng backstage.
The Jamaican performer, who has been in California since the previous week with producer Rowan “Drop Top” Melhado, is supposedly one of several musicians signed to Minaj’s new label at Republic Records, but this is not yet verified.
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On the Friday, March 3 session of Queen Radio on Amazon Music’s AMP, Minaj declared, “I have a record label now.” She added, “When I get behind an artist, y’all know how I do sh-t for people that’s not even signed to me. Imagine what I’ma do for the ones that’s signed.”
She further noted, “Don’t think my label is just rap, or Black, or anything. We got some other genres of music.”
According to Billboard, the Trinidadian rap sensation also thanked Lil Wayne on Friday for helping to launch her career and for motivating her to support the unidentified label’s initial group of artists, which is said to include Nana Fofie, Tate Kobang, Rico Danna, and London Hill.
“When I came in this game, I didn’t have no paperwork with Lil Wayne, but he had us on tour, he had us in a studio, he was getting on my mixtapes,” she noted.
“So I understand the importance of having somebody else doing the heavy lifting for you. I understand why people are coming out and they’re so, you know, microwaveable and they’re here today and gone tomorrow because there’s no structure. There’s no real person that believes in them. That’s like, ‘Nah, I’m gonna make it my business to see you shine.’”
Patty Lauren (Patty Duke), a longstanding collaborator of Minaj’s, will hold an A&R position at the new label.
Skeng and his producers John Coop and Shacko Di Truth secured a contract with Jamaica-based Jon Baker’s Geejam Music in June 2022.
Since then, Skeng and Minaj have become close, and as a result, Drop Top and DiTruth remixed Likkle Miss. Skeng received his first Billboard entry thanks to the remix.
The Super Bass rapper continued the trend when she praised the young Jamaican performer as one of her inspirations in an October 2022 interview with actress and talk show presenter Jada Pinkett-Smith for Interview Magazine.
She stated, “Of course, there are always people out there inspiring me. Let’s see. Do you want to know what’s so funny? This might be very odd, but I just stumbled upon this guy, his name is Skeng. One day I’m on TikTok and I heard this song I went on YouTube to listen to it more, and I ended up going to song after song from this guy. I already love dancehall, but it’s been a minute since a new male dancehall artist stood out to me.”
She went on to say that she was pulled to the deejay more because of his honesty and ‘unorthodox’ trends.
“What inspired me was he isn’t trying to be like anyone. I loved how freaking raw it was. And his sound was just so different. People may not know him yet but they will.”
Recently, the two were performing as part of Trinidad’s annual carnival festivities. For her most recent song, Red Ruby Da Sleeze, which debuted on Friday as well, Minaj also included a sample from the well-known Diwali Riddim.
She previously used the Dirty Riddim and the Unfinished Business Riddim in her songs MEGATRON from 2019 and Coco Chanel from 2018 alongside Foxy Brown, respectively.
