After several years of creating mixtapes, it seemed only natural that Minaj would put together an album. She describes the difference as moving from doing a lot of rapping on her mixtapes to actually creating songs on the album. Her inspirations tend to come from the beat. She writes lyrics in a journal or simply sings them in the recording studio. While a lot of her former work involved singing as a reference for other R&B artists to come and fill in later, she does a lot of her own singing on “Pink Friday,” due to its personal nature.
Nicki described the album as creating songs, but, as she continued to record, it developed more of a theme embracing all of the different characteristics of her personality.
“I think what it says about me is that I'm very diverse. I pride myself on the fact that everyone can love ‘Pink Friday.’ Sometimes you get an album and every song sounds the exact same, but ‘Pink Friday’ is one of those albums where, if you like the hardcore rap, pop, or mushy songs, you'll have favorites. I'm just excited that I was able to portray all of my personalities on one album, and I think that's what ‘Pink Friday’ is.
"When I started rapping, people were trying to make me like the typical New York rapper, but I'm not that. No disrespect to New York rappers, but I don't want people to hear me and know exactly where I'm from. I wanted the album to be universal and versatile. It really feels like it speaks for every one of my personalities," said Minaj, in an interview with Billboard.
The color pink, Nicki's favorite color and a constant theme in her ensemble, is used to describe her debut album. She chose to keep it as a constant, despite the many variances between tracks.
“It makes me feel euphoric and puts you back to being a kid. It makes me think of cotton candy and just happiness. I think it works well with just about every other color, so it matches all of my ensembles. We named the album ‘Pink Friday’ because it's dropping the same week as Black Friday, and we just wanted to put our stamp on that day and on that week.”