Nicki Minaj delivers spot-on Adele impression in James Corden interview
Nicki Minaj has good form as Adele.
The rapper, 39, delivered a spot-on impression of the singer, 33, while making an appearance on “The Late Late Show with James Corden” Thursday night.
“All right, in order for me to channel Adele, I sort of have to think like a black lady in London, right?” Minaj told the audience in a Cockney accent that mirrored the way Adele speaks.
“Because the thing is, normally, everybody knows … my British accent is sort of like a posh white lady. A rich white lady, right?” Minaj said, referencing her rap alter ego Martha Zolanski. “But with Adele, I sort of have, like, to transform.”
Visualizing her version of the “Easy on Me” songstress, the hip-hop star explained, “She might have used to sell crack. Maybe she used to be hustling nickels and dimes in the hood and then she got her big break.”
Minaj not only nailed her Adele accent, but she also made the same facial expressions and even used similar animated hand gestures as the Grammy winner.
“That’s what I see when I see her. … It’s so expressive, right?” she concluded.
Minaj did her impression after Corden, 43, played a clip of Adele seamlessly performing the rapper’s “Monster” verse during her 2016 “Carpool Karaoke” segment.
“First of all, it’s Adele. Second of all, it’s ‘Monster.’ You guys made such an amazing freaking tag team,” Minaj told the late-night host. “That made my day, my year. I probably got a thousand phone calls about that one thing.”
The stars are clearly big fans of each other’s work. In October 2019, Minaj joked about collaborating with Adele on new music. But when her joke was taken seriously, she had to set the record straight.
“Omg guys. I thought everyone could clearly see I was being sarcastic,” Minaj tweeted at the time with screenshots of multiple reports that she would be working with Adele. “S–t! Now I have to go to Adele’s studio & steal some files. Who’s in the UK? I got a job for you.”