Providence, RI – On her first full-fledged tour promoting her album, Nicki Minaj is taking the excitement and the energy to an all time high for her fans, the crowd that came to see her. The ‘I Am Music II’ tour just recently kicked off in Providence, Rhode Island with artists like Rick Ross, drummer Travis Barkley, and Lil Wayne in attendance to perform to an enormous crowd.

The Young Money femcee didn’t waste any time jumping on stage and giving the crowd an electrifying performance. Interesting enough, underneath all of the theatrics, pyrotechnics, and costumes, she is still an artist, a lyricist, first and foremost. Minaj recently spoke to MTV News while on tour at their debut show.

These were her comments:

“You always want to start the show and get everybody riled up. At the end of the day, it’s Hip-Hop. Let’s not get that misconstrued or anything. People see the way I’m dressed and forget what I’m really doing. Why I’m really here is ’cause I write my raps. Why I’m really here is because I’m an MC. Why I’m really here is because I can go toe-to-toe with dudes. So we want to start the show off saying, ‘Yep, this is Nicki Minaj and this is what I do.’”

According to MTV.com, she was introduced onstage with the theme song to the film Gladiator and quickly dived into the track Roman’s Revenge off of her debut Pink Friday. The crowd continued to applaud her performance as she went in on tracks like ‘Your Love,’ ‘Right Thru Me,’ and eventually into some old material from her mixtape beginnings.

Check with LiveNation.com to see the entire listing of cities and locations for the entire ‘I Am Music II’ tour.