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Nicki Minaj – MEGATRON

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Nicki Minaj drops her first solo single in over a year, and it goes straight to No. 1 on iTunes within hours.

Nicki Minaj ended a stretch of relative quiet on June 21, 2019, with “MEGATRON,” her first standalone single since her 2018 album ‘Queen.’ The dancehall-and-hip-hop track leans hard into her Trinidadian roots, sampling a Jamaican reggae classic, and arrives with a music video built around jungle scenery, a mechanic shop, and a sports car that ends up in flames.

• “MEGATRON” samples Mr. Vegas’s 1998 hit “Heads High” over the “Filthy Riddim,” produced by Pop Wansel with additional work from NOVA WAV.
• The track hit No. 1 on the U.S. iTunes chart, making Minaj the first female rapper to reach the top spot with a solo song since her own “Chun-Li” in 2018.
• “MEGATRON” debuted at No. 20 on the Billboard Hot 100 for the week of July 6, 2019, and its release coincided with a special episode of her Beats 1 show, ‘Queen Radio.’

The Sound: Dancehall Roots Meet Hip-Hop Bounce

Minaj co-wrote “MEGATRON” alongside Brittany “Chi” Coney, Denisia “Blu June” Andrews, and Haldane Wayne “Danny” Browne, with production handled by Pop Wansel and NOVA WAV. The backbone of the track is a sample of Mr. Vegas’s 1998 dancehall staple “Heads High,” laid over the “Filthy Riddim” — a rhythm well known in Jamaican music circles. That choice grounds the song in the Caribbean sound Minaj grew up around in Trinidad before her family moved to Queens, New York, giving “MEGATRON” a bassy, riddim-driven pulse rather than a straight trap or pop beat.

The track marks her first solo single since ‘Queen’ dropped in August 2018, and it landed via her longtime labels Young Money, Cash Money, and Republic Records. Fans looking for more of her catalog and career milestones can find plenty covered under Trending Music, where releases like this one get tracked as they climb the charts.

The Video: Jungle Heat, Mechanic Shop, and a Car on Fire

Director Mike Ho built the “MEGATRON” visual around a string of vivid, sun-drenched sets. Minaj is shown getting intimate with her partner Kenneth Petty in a lush jungle setting, working a look inside a mechanic shop, and posing beside a green sports car that ultimately erupts into flames. The tonal shifts — tropical, industrial, explosive — mirror the song’s own jump between sultry dancehall verses and a hard, boastful hook.

The sample of Mr. Vegas’s “Heads High” over the “Filthy Riddim” ties “MEGATRON” directly to Minaj’s Trinidadian heritage rather than the trap-leaning sound of much of her recent catalog.

The Chart Numbers

“MEGATRON” moved fast once it dropped. It shot to No. 1 on the U.S. iTunes chart, a feat Minaj hadn’t repeated since “Chun-Li” topped the same chart in 2018 — making her the first female rapper to hit iTunes No. 1 with a solo song twice in that stretch. On the Billboard Hot 100 dated for the week of July 6, 2019, the track debuted at No. 20, giving Minaj another entry point into the mainstream conversation just under a year after ‘Queen’ hit shelves.

The rollout wasn’t limited to streaming platforms and video sites. Minaj used a special episode of her Beats 1 program ‘Queen Radio’ to coincide with the release, giving listeners direct commentary from her around the single’s debut. That kind of parallel radio programming has become part of how she stages her drops, pairing the visual with her own voice explaining the work.

Megatron Within Her Discography

Coming off ‘Queen,’ which arrived in August 2018, “MEGATRON” functions as a standalone single rather than an album cut — a move Minaj has used before to keep her name on the charts between full-length projects. The Caribbean-leaning production also puts it in conversation with other dancehall-inflected hits from female rappers and pop acts navigating the same lane in 2019, a trend readers can follow further through Trending Celebrities coverage of the artists shaping that sound.

With “MEGATRON” sitting at No. 20 on the Hot 100 and still fresh off its iTunes run, the next marker to watch is whether Minaj follows it with another single before any new album cycle, the way she used “Chun-Li” and “Barbie Tingz” to bridge into ‘Queen’ the year before.