The rapper made her return to the late-night show after her iconic appearance visit in 2018.
Nicki Minaj has made her return to The Late Show With Stephen Colbert, and reminded fans that she and the late-night host are a perfect rap duo.
It's been five years since the rapper made her last appearance on The Late Show, which she visited to promote her latest album at the time, Queen. During the August 2018 episode, Colbert teased Minaj about her controversial single, "Barbie Dreams," in which the rapper calls out all the A-list men in hip-hop and pop culture who have (allegedly) tried their best to hook up with her at some point, and why she shot them down.
"I noticed I'm not on the list of men," host Stephen Colbert joked as a blushing Minaj laughed discreetly. "I mean, it's pretty comprehensive. I'm just curious, if I were to make the list, how might you inform me."
Minaj quickly turned the tables with an impromptu set of lyrics that left the late-night host hilariously flustered. "I might f**k Stephen after the show/He gon’ come back to work with a magical glow," Minaj rapped, leading the audience to cheer and Colbert to cover his face with his note cards as he got more and more embarrassed.
"But when you see us please, motherf**ker, don't stare/Just address me as Queen Nicki Colbert," Minaj finished with a flourish.
Composing himself, Colbert respectfully nodded and shook her hand before joking (mostly to himself), "It's all downhill from here."
On Wednesday night, Minaj returned to the show for the first time since that iconic appearance and proved that the duo's unexpected chemistry is just as hilariously evident as it was five years ago.
While promoting her new album, Pink Friday 2, Minaj decided to pull off another rap swap, this time using her song, "FTCU [F**k the Club Up]."
Naming her improvised verses "F**k the Colbert Up," Minaj rapped, "High heels on for Stevie / If I marry Stevie he ain't never gon' leave me," and left the ending open for Colbert to complete the verse.
"High heels or not, Nicki / You better hope you never meet my wife Evie," Colbert rapped back.
Amid the raucous applause, Minaj asked a gleeful Colbert, "Stephen. Do you realize we just battle rapped each other?"
Gag city, population one.
For those keeping track at home, Colbert has been married to Evelyn McGee-Colbert for 30 years, and the couple shares three children.
Watch the duo's rap battle ahead.
Last month, Minaj opened up about her new album in an intimate interview for Vogue's December issue cover story.
The rapper revealed that after a conversation with another woman about mom guilt, she realized that trying to stay away from "the only thing I know how to freaking do" was fruitless. So she returned to make music, which leads to the imminent release of her upcoming fifth studio album, Pink Friday 2.
"When I look back at a lot of my music, I'm like, Oh, my God, where was the me in it?" she said of the highly anticipated project. "So for this album, I went back to the old game plan."
Minaj confessed that she feels that she "got away from" an optimistic outlook with her recent music and looks to recapture that energy with her fifth album. Pink Friday 2 will be a nostalgic callback to her beginnings and an introduction to a new era of the rapper's music.
"Imagine a Nicki Minaj greatest hits album, but all the songs are new," Aubry "Big Juice" Delaine, Minaj's longtime mix engineer, boasted.
The new direction is a sign of a greater change within Minaj, who said she feels as if she's unlocked a secret of life. "For me the idea of accepting what you can't change -- it just never clicked with me before," she shared. "So now, if I find myself trying to control it all, I try to remember what's really important. I look in my son's face, and my whole soul lights up. He has no clue how nerve-racking it's been for me to be a mother and an artist."
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