Lil Wayne Pens Tribute To ‘Icon’ Nicki Minaj For ‘100 Most Influential People’ List

Lil Wayne discovered Nicki Minaj back in 2009 and signed her to his Young Money Entertainment label. Since then, the two have maintained a well-documented friendship and professional relationship. Now the rap icon has penned an essay about Nicki’s impact and influence for TIME magazine’s annual list of “100 Most Influential People.”

Lil Wayne had this to say about Nicki Minaj.

“You know, in New York they used to have these street DVDs. It just so happened that I appeared in one, and when I looked at the finished product, Nicki Minaj was on a part of the DVD. I was like, ‘Woooooow!’ She was just being Nicki without the glitz and glamour. When I heard the first two and four bars, it wasn’t even about her rapping better than any female rapper. It was about, man, she’s rapping better than other rappers—period.

“I always wanted more for my artists and saw Nicki’s potential from the first moment I laid eyes on her. She’s reached far beyond everything I would have imagined. Man, she’s so influential and doing all the right things. She’s an icon, a boss and a role model to all these young girls out here on how to do it the right way. Her work ethic speaks volumes and has yielded these results. The scary thing is she’s still going. Ha! Nicki Minaj will go down as one of the best to do it in the history of music.”

Other selections for the list include Idris Elba, Kendrick Lamar, Adele, and Leonardo DiCaprio.

Read why @NickiMinaj is on the #TIME100 https://t.co/MEqVYRmMzG pic.twitter.com/YH7m5uQn7j

— TIME.com (@TIME) April 21, 2016

Minaj is the only female rapper in the history of the game with the most charted tracks on the Billboard Hot 100, and her work has earned numerous awards and honors, including 10 Grammy nominations, six American Music Awards, 10 BET Awards, three MTV Video Music Awards, and four Billboard Music Awards. She was also the recipient of Billboard’s Women in Music 2011 Rising Star award. Nicki has also endorsed brands such as Adidas, MAC Cosmetics, and Pepsi. In 2013, she was a judge on the 12th season of American Idol, and last year, EW named Minaj “Entertainer of the Year.”

Nicki can currently be seen in a supporting role in Barbershop: The Next Cut. The “Anaconda” lyricist made her film debut in the 2012 animated film Ice Age: Continental Drift, and she appeared in 2014’s The Other Woman.

Wayne is a Grammy-winning recording artist and producer who has sold over 100 million records worldwide. In 1991, at the age of 9, he joined Cash Money Records as the label’s youngest artist. In 2005, he launched his own imprint label, Young Money Entertainment (YMCMB). In March 2010, Lil Wayne began serving an eight-month prison sentence in New York after being convicted of criminal possession of a weapon stemming from an incident in July 2007. He’s currently embattled in a lawsuit with Cash Money owners Bryan “Birdman” Williams and Ronald “Slim” Williams for his 49 percent control of Young Money and $51 million.

@TIME @NICKIMINAJ how did this bimbo get on the list?

— Sam Allen (@irishbrigadesmn) April 21, 2016

Following his heated discussion with The Breakfast Club Friday morning, Birdman returned to Power 106 to chat with Angie Martinez about his label, his artists and the Cash Money biopic. He also touched on his current relationship with Lil Wayne, saying it’s all cool between the two.

“It’s kosher…we cool (that’s ) my son, we going always be cool. I love him to death, that’ll never change,” Birdman said.

Lil Wayne’s Tha Carter V is his upcoming 12th studio album that was set to drop in 2014 but due to his dispute with Birdman, the album has been pushed back many times, and no release date has been set. Last year, Weezy self-released the mixtape Sorry 4 the Wait 2, a gift for fans to compensate for the continued delay of the album. It is the sequel to 2011’s Sorry 4 the Wait, which was his response to the delay of his ninth album, Tha Carter IV.

[Photo by Frank Micelotta/Invsion/AP Images]