Nicki Minaj’s Pink Friday 2 World Tour Is Already the Highest Grossing Rap Tour for a Woman — and It Isn’t Over Yet

Eric Frankenberg
·3 min read
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Nicki Minaj wrapped the North American leg of the Pink Friday 2 World Tour earlier this week. Not only did it deliver the biggest grosses of her career, it sets a new high mark among women in hip-hop. According to figures reported to Billboard Boxscore, the Pink Friday 2 World Tour grossed $67 million and sold 439,000 tickets, making it the highest grossing and bestselling rap tour by a woman in Boxscore history.

Minaj launched the tour on March 1 in Oakland, Calif., bringing in $2.3 million from 14,000 tickets. That was the first of 34 shows in American and Canadian arenas, before closing up on May 13 in Oklahoma City.

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The Pink Friday 2 routing included four double-headers, providing $3 million-plus grosses in Atlanta, Boston, Brooklyn, Chicago and Toronto. Two nights at Brooklyn’s Barclays Center on April 4 and May 1 proved the biggest, with $4.3 million and 28,100 tickets.

In addition to her two Brooklyn plays, Minaj also performed at Manhattan’s Madison Square Garden and the Prudential Center in New Jersey. Combined, those four NYC-area shows brought in $9.3 million and sold more than 54,000 tickets, with the MSG show claiming honors as the single highest grossing show of the tour so far.

The Pink Friday 2 World Tour was tracking to become Minaj’s biggest from opening night. Throughout the 34-date North American leg, the trek averaged just under $2 million and 13,000 per night. That’s nearly triple the pace of 2012’s Pink Friday: Reoloaded Tour ($776,000) and 2015-16’s The Pinkprint Tour ($657,000).

In November, Billboard published a list of the highest grossing rap artists of all time, with Minaj as the only woman at No. 20. With updated grosses from the Pink Friday 2 World Tour, she climbs to No. 11.

Still, Minaj’s record-setting trek arrives amid a particularly fruitful time for rap tours, and especially so among women. The Pink Friday 2 World Tour re-writes a record set by Doja Cat just five months ago, when The Scarlet Tour became the top rap tour among women acts with $37.3 million in the bank. Earlier this week, Megan Thee Stallion kicked off an arena tour of her own, launching the Hot Girl Summer Tour in Minneapolis. And in July, Missy Elliott – the first woman in hip-hop to be inducted into the Rock & Roll Hall of Fame – will set out on the Out of this World: The Missy Elliott Experience Tour. It will be her first headlining tour in a pioneering career that spans almost 30 years.

The Pink Friday 2 World Tour isn’t done bringing in business yet. Minaj will kickstart the tour’s European leg next week, with a show at Ziggo Dome in Amsterdam on May 23. In addition to a bevy of festival shows, she’ll play 15 headline dates that could add another $10 million to $20 million to the tour’s record-setting total. At $93.9 million and 911,000 in reported career grosses and attendance, it’ll all but certainly put Minaj over $100 million and 1 million tickets.

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