Nicki Minaj’s Pinkprint Tour Derailed by Amsterdam Detainment
The European hits just kept on coming for rap royalty Nicki Minaj this weekend. Fresh off her high-energy Thursday night show in Amsterdam, the Queen of Hip-Hop found herself in a regal mess at Schiphol Airport on Saturday.
According to Dutch military police, the “Starships” singer was arrested on suspicion of possessing “soft drugs” as she attempted to jet off to Manchester for the latest stop on her wildly popular Pinkprint Tour. The 41-year-old rap icon, whose real name is Onika Tanya Maraj-Petty, was detained for over 5 hours as officials searched her luggage.
In a video posted to her X social account amid the chaos, a distraught Minaj proclaimed her innocence as officers informed her she was “under arrest for carrying drugs” and would need to be transported to a police station. The dramatic footage shows the bemused rapper requesting a lawyer and vehemently denying the allegations as she’s ordered into a police van.
“I’m traveling with nine fucking people, you’re gonna arrest me for WHATTT?” she defiantly asks the officers. Despite her objections, Dutch authorities confirmed they discovered and weighed an undisclosed amount of marijuana among her belongings.
After being released on a fine several hours later, Minaj finally arrived in Manchester in the early morning hours, over 6 hours past her scheduled call time at Co-op Live arena where nearly 20,000 fans had been eagerly awaiting her Pink Friday finale performance. The show was inevitably postponed, leaving a sea of disappointed Barbz in its wake.
“I spent £150 for my ticket and booked a day off work for it, and we sat there for about three hours waiting and we got told it’s not happening,” lamented 18-year-old fan Imogen Pope. “I’m gutted.”
On her X account, Minaj fired off a series of posts claiming the arrest was an attempt to “sabotage” her massively successful tour. “They’re being paid big money to try to sabotage my tour b/c soooooo many ppl are mad that it’s this successful & they can’t eat off me,” she alleged.
While a minor drug charge is unlikely to derail her meteoric career for long, this salacious detainment represents yet another dramatic twist in Minaj’s captivating decade-plus journey from mixtape marvel to boundary-breaking hip-hop icon. From her artificial persona battles with Lil Kim to her eventful relationship with Kenneth Petty to her infamous MTV Video Music Awards wardrobe malfunction, the ever-provocative rapper remains inevitable tabloid fodder.
As she wrapped the European Pinkprint Tour leg on Sunday in Birmingham, one can only imagine the scorched-earth rap response this defiant Queen has in store. Consider this merely the latest flare-up in Minaj’s incendiary career engulfed in the pink smoke of infamy.
