Trinidad-born rap­per and re­cip­i­ent of this year's BET Best Fe­male Hip Hop artiste award Nic­ki Mi­naj chipped down Jern­ing­ham Av­enue in Bel­mont Tri­ni-style yes­ter­day dur­ing the film­ing of her lat­est video, Pound the Alarm. Mi­naj and her team spent most of the morn­ing film­ing at a house in Cadiz Road, Bel­mont, away from the glare of the me­dia and the pub­lic. At around 3 pm, Mi­naj was dri­ven down Jern­ing­ham Av­enue in a black Range Rover, and was greet­ed by her fans. She changed in­to a black Car­ni­val cos­tume with vi­brant red plumage at the Na­tion­al Car­ni­val Com­mis­sion (NCC) of­fice, touched up her make­up, and joined de­light­ed mas­quer­aders for the staged street pa­rade.

The mas­quer­aders, who had been hyped by a per­for­mance by so­ca star Machel Mon­tano be­fore Mi­naj ar­rived, stopped danc­ing and at­tempt­ed to get clos­er to the hip hop star. "This is a video shoot, this is not time for au­to­graphs," an amused Mon­tano told them. Mi­naj even­tu­al­ly joined Mon­tano on the plat­form at the back of the truck, where the duo per­formed to­geth­er. At around 6 pm Mi­naj, her crew and the ex­tras ar­rived at the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah. On­look­ers were in­vit­ed to join the shoot. Bun­ji Gar­lin and Faye Ann Lyons per­formed their Car­ni­val 2K12 hits, while Mi­naj 'wine down', il­lic­it­ing screams from fans. Af­ter the shoot she in­ter­act­ed with fans.The award-win­ning artiste ar­rived in Trinidad on Tues­day to re­cruit 500 ex­tras for the Car­ni­val-themed video. Screen­ing was done by High De­f­i­n­i­tion Video in the Pad­dock area of the Queen's Park Sa­van­nah. Twen­ty of the front­line mod­els in cos­tumes were pro­vid­ed by Tribe, while oth­er band­lead­ers pro­vid­ed mod­els for the cast­ing.

US video di­rec­tor Ben­ny Boom, who was con­tract­ed by 29-year-old Mi­naj to cre­ate a "huge, grand pop video in Trinidad," said every­thing went well. Boom said his crew was well as­sist­ed by the NCC and the T&T En­ter­tain­ment Com­pa­ny. He said the pro­duc­tion will ben­e­fit both Mi­naj and T&T, as the video will rep­re­sent T&T to the world through Car­ni­val, the peo­ple, the colours and how the peo­ple show­cased them­selves. Born Oni­ka Tanya Maraj, Mi­naj lived in St James un­til she was five, when she mi­grat­ed to New York with her moth­er and broth­er.

(With re­port­ing by Aba Luke)