Watch Drake join Nicki Minaj on stage for the first live performance of ‘Needle’

2 May, 2024

Drake and Nicki Minaj perform on stage

Nicki Minaj surprised fans at a recent live show by bringing out Drake as a surprise guest and performing the live debut of ‘Needle’.

The moment took place on Tuesday (April 30), as the ‘Super Freaky Girl’ rapper took to the stage in Toronto as part of her ongoing world tour, celebrating the release of 2023’s ‘Pink Friday 2’.

While on stage at the Scotiabank Arena, she told the audience midway through the set that she would be bringing out a special guest. “Make some noise for the king of Toronto,” Nicki told the crowd, “Make some noise for this icon, this legend.”

It was there that the ‘Trust Issues’ rapper took to the stage, and performed the first-ever live performance of the two’s collaborative track ‘Needle’ together in front of his hometown audience.

The song was featured on Minaj’s recent album ‘Pink Friday 2’, and peaked at Number 34 on the Billboard Hot 100 after its debut. It remained on the charts for four weeks and became one of the album’s biggest tracks.

As well as breaking out the song, Drake also went on to perform one song solo on the night – delivering a rendition of his 2023 track ‘Rich Baby Daddy’ while the headliner went backstage for a wardrobe change.

Before leaving the stage, the ‘God’s Plan’ rapper left the crowd with a parting message, which seemed to make a nod to his ongoing feud with Kendrick Lamar. “I love you. You know what time it is — you know what I have to do,” he said.

Check out more footage from the set below.

The surprise appearance at Minaj’s headline show arrived around the same time that the Canadian rapper replied to Kendrick Lamar‘s brutal ‘Euphoria’ diss track.

On Tuesday night, Lamar released the six-minute diss track against the rapper, calling him a “master manipulator” and questioning his abilities as a father amongst other accusations. It is the latest response in a feud ignited by Lamar, who hit out against Drake and J. Cole in his guest verse on Future and Metro Boomin‘s ‘Like That’ in March.

In response to the diss track, Drake shared a post online which seemed to mock Lamar’s lyrics: “I’m the biggest hater / I hate the way that you walk, the way that you talk, I hate the way that you dress / I hate the way that you sneak diss, if I catch flight, it’s gon’ be direct” with a scene from cult romcom 10 Things I Hate About You.

In the original scene, Kat (Julia Stiles) reads out her poem about Patrick (Heath Ledger),  which begins: “I hate the way you talk to me and the way you cut your hair / I hate the way you drive my car, I hate it when you stare”. The poem eventually reveals her true romantic feelings for Patrick: “But mostly I hate the way I don’t hate you / Not even close, not even a little bit, not even at all.”

As a nod to the poem’s intentions, Drake captioned the scene with a broken heart and winky face emoji.

As for Nicki Minaj, the rapper continued her world tour last night by returning to her hometown for a Barclays Center show in Brooklyn. She’s set to wrap up the US leg of the dates with shows in Oklahoma, Houston, Dallas and Austin over the next few days, before she heads across the pond for a run of European and UK tour dates.

Visit here for remaining tickets.

The tour comes in celebration of her long-awaited ‘Pink Friday 2’ album, which arrived in December and was described by NME as a “blockbuster sequel [that] lives up to the hype”.

“Comprising 22 tracks that unfold over 70 minutes, ‘Pink Friday 2’ is probably too long, but Minaj paces it sharply. The first half pings between lean, mean hip-hop tracks and melancholy midtempos, while the second half contains a smattering of pop-rap cuts including the Rick James-sampling ‘Super Freaky Girl’,” the four-star review read.

“Minaj’s ability to impose herself on an instantly familiar sample also drives ‘Everybody’, a frantic banger built on Junior Senior’s 2002 novelty hit ‘Move Your Body’. It’s the quirkiest moment on an album where Minaj is generally more restrained than in the past. Here, she doesn’t play around with alter-egos quite as freely as on ‘Pink Friday’.”

The post Watch Drake join Nicki Minaj on stage for the first live performance of ‘Needle’ appeared first on NME.