Roman in Moscow (lost Nicki Minaj music video; 2011)

Cover of the song's single release.

Status: Lost

Onika Tanya Maraj (better known by her stage name Nicki Minaj) is a Trinidad born rapper/pop singer who has been active since 2007. Over the course of her career, she has recorded 3 mixtapes and 4 studio albums, with said albums containing numerous hit singles including Your Love, Starships, and Anaconda, among others.

Roman in Moscow

Roman in Moscow was a promotional single recorded by Nicki and released on December 2nd, 2011, that served as a teaser for her second studio album Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded. The basic plot of the song revolved around Nicki's alter ego Roman Zolanski escaping from a Russian boarding school that he had been sent to by his mother, Martha. Upon its release, the song was a moderate success, peaking at number 64 on the Billboard Hot 100 and number 13 on the Billboard R&B/Hip-Hop Digital Songs chart, as well as peaking at number 88 on the Canadian Hot 100.

Presumably, in an attempt to further promote the Roman Reloaded album, a music video was produced for the song that was supposedly directed by famous music video director Hype Williams. The production of the video was announced on December 18th, 2011, with Nicki describing the plot of the video as "Well, he was there [in Moscow] secretly because [alter ego] Martha wanted him to go there, so they put him in this thing with monks and nuns; they were trying to rehabilitate him." To date, this is the only concrete piece of information about the video to have resurfaced publicly, with the only other alleged detail being that a gun prop used in the video was supposedly later reused in the music video for Minaj's 2014 single Lookin Ass.

Availability

As of 2019, the music video, along with any production materials created for it, remains unreleased. The reason for this is currently unknown, though Nicki has since shown her distaste for the song (hence its exclusion from the Roman Reloaded album), so this may have contributed to it. Regardless of the reasoning, unless someone were to get in contact with someone known to have been involved in the production of the video, the chance of it seeing any kind of release, official or otherwise, remains unlikely.

External Links

• Wikipedia article for Nicki Minaj. Retrieved 10 Jul '19
• Wikipedia article for the song. Retrieved 10 Jul '19
• Nicki Minaj Wikia article for the song. Retrieved 10 Jul '19