Nicki Minaj Permanently Grounds ‘Starships’ During NYE Show: ‘Stupid Song’

The rapper told the crowd at E11EVEN in Miami that she is no longer performing her 2012 hit.

Nicki Minaj attends the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards at the Prudential Center on Sept. 12, 2023 in Newark, New Jersey.

Jamie McCarthy/WireImage

Nicki Minaj hit the stage at Miami’s E11EVEN on New Year’s Eve with her usual trunk full of hits. But when the first strains of her 2012 Billboard Hot 100 top 10 hit began pumping out of the speakers, Minaj informed Barbz that she is never, ever going back to the beach.

A TikTok video from the show found Minaj cutting off the track from her Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded just a few lines into the opening verse after letting the audience do the heavy lifting on the song that is one of Nicki’s biggest all-time solo charting singles in the U.S. After waving her hand to get her DJ to cut the track off, Nicki told the crowd that the pop hit has been permanently grounded.

“Hold on. Psych, psych, psych, psych. I don’t perform that song no more, y’all. I don’t like it, what y’all want me to do?” she said as some boos emerged from the audience. “Stupid song.” The rapper then seemed to pivot to another one of her radio smashes, “Super Bass.” Though the RedOne-produced lead single from Minaj’s sophomore album is one of her most popular, the rapper has hinted before that she doesn’t love it.

“I hate ‘Starships,’ I mean ew, ‘Starships?’” she told Pollstar Live in 2020 during a Q&A in which she also noted that she wished she’d never recorded “Anaconda,” another one of her mega-hits. “I’m like, ‘Why did I do that?,’” she said of “Starships.” “I really think that every time I hear it.” “Starships” peaked at No. 5 on the Hot 100 and spent 31 weeks on the chart.

Minaj just released her long-awaited fifth studio album, Pink Friday 2, and is gearing up to launch her Pink Friday 2 world tour in March.

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