Nicki Minaj Pays Fine for Lewd Performance in Jamaica

Nicki Minaj backstage with Beenie Man at the Reggae Sumfest 2011 in Jamaica.

Courtesy of Nicki Minaj via Twitter

Nicki Minaj has paid a J$1000 fine after pleading guilty to an obscenity charge in Jamaica. The rapper was charged for a recent performance at the Reggae Sumfest in Montego Bay, where her set was "peppered with expletives accentuated by sexually suggestive dance moves." (Yup, that definitely sounds like a Nicki Minaj show.)

Photos: Nicki Minaj's Best Looks

Minaj did not appear in court and was represented by local attorney Hugh Thompson, who entered an ex parte guilty plea on her behalf. The Reggae Sumfest 2011 gig was Minaj's first performance in Jamaica, where she has enjoyed local popularity since appearing on a remix of reggae star Gyptian's track "Hold You" last year.

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Song Stories

“Piano Man”

Billy Joel | 1973

Billy Joel’s first hit, “Piano Man,” was – ironically – an autobiographical lament about how his first album wasn’t a hit. When Cold Spring Harbor didn’t take off, Joel briefly became a lounge pianist in Los Angeles, and this song, about that experience, expressed his frustrations and fears at the time: “And they sit at the bar and put bread in my jar/And say, ‘Man, what are you doing here?’” “It was all right,” Joel said later, about the gig. “I got free drinks and union scale, which was the first steady money I’d made in a long time.”

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