Nicki Minaj chose not to sign with Gucci Mane in the late 2000s because she knew he was “going to destroy her,” according to her then-manager Debra Antney.
Antney is Waka Flocka‘s mother and was managing the careers of Atlanta-based stars like of her son, Gucci, OJ Da Juiceman and more when she began managing the New York-based Minaj in late 2008. Though the Pink Friday rapper had been discovered and co-signed by Lil Wayne almost two years prior, he had yet to present her with a deal, and she decided to move down to Atlanta to be closer to Deb and work on being signed.
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While there, Minaj spent a lot of time with Gucci and his 1017 crew, which led to talks of her signing with them – but according to Deb, she knew it wasn’t the move.
Appearing on Ray Daniels’ The GAUDS Show on Monday (November 25), the veteran music manager explained: “One of the things she knew was that Gucci was going to destroy her. That n-gga stayed in jail, stayed in beefs, stayed in stuff. She wasn’t going to be in a winning thing. And I remember going to sit with Baby and I gave him that damn tape. I gave him that CD and was like, ‘You gon’ be a fool if you don’t sign this girl.’”
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The convo begins around the 1-hour mark below.
Nicki Minaj and Deb Antney later parted ways as the rapper ascended to superstardom in the 2010s, but the two mended fences earlier this year.
Their reunion was documented on Instagram, with Minaj giving Deb her overdue props for always having her back, even when times got rough.
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This woman is somebody who, no matter what I went through — every time I called her, I would be crying […] and she would be like, ‘girl, that ain’t no big deal, stop!’” she said, as she panned the camera to focus on Antney in the background.
She continued: “It was great for me to see a woman in the music business have my back. You know? And tell me that there wasn’t nothing wrong with me.”
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As the CEO of Mizay Entertainment, Antney helped change Atlanta’s trajectory within Hip Hop culture. Taking even more of a background role, she’s helped form one of the city’s biggest online radio stations, B100, which has earned a reputation as a starting point for many aspiring artists.
For the reality TV-obsessed public, Antney has appeared more than a few times on VH1’s Love & Hip Hop: Atlanta by way of Flocka’s storyline with then-wife Tammy Rivera.
But as she told HipHopDX back in 2016, the success of her roster of artists stemmed from her ability to have an impeccable team around her.
“I can’t take all the accolades because I really did have a very good team at that time,” she said. “The biggest part of it is not so much the industry as it was the artist. It was about the artist. All of them were artists that were hurt and if you know anything about me, that’s my first love in really helping people.”
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She continued: “The background in case management that I have as a social worker made it just how it is. I can’t help my heart. It wasn’t so much where I was looking at them chart in the industry as much as it was healing them and actually fulfilling their goals or taking them somewhere where they wanted to be.
“I just wanted to make their dreams become reality and I wanted to save them. Again, it was multiple people that were just hurting. It wasn’t about the industry to keep it real. It was just something natural.”
