Nicki Minaj can do Adele just as well as Adele can do Nicki Minaj.
The “Super Bass” rapper delivered a spot-on impression of the British balladeer Wednesday as she marked the return of James Corden’s popular “Carpool Karaoke” on “The Late Late Show” after a two-year break.
At the top of the segment, Minaj randomly slipped into a cockney accent, prompting a befuddled Corden, who is British, to tell her that she sounded like the Tottenham-bred “Easy on Me” singer.
He then asked Minaj to do her best Adele impression and she obliged, facial tics and all.
“I go viral for basically anything, do you know what I mean? I sit down at the basketball game, right? I don’t look at the camera. I do one of these numbers [batting eyelashes],” Minaj quipped, referring to the singer’s meme-able reluctance to react to cameras at the NBA All-Star game in February. “People pay for these sort of viral moments, you know what I mean?!”
The rapper also approved of Adele’s delivery of Minaj’s verse in Kanye West’s 2010 hit “Monster,” which Adele performed when she appeared on “Carpool Karaoke” back in 2016.
“I just loved it. I mean, she made me so, so happy. She embodied Nicki Minaj,” the rapper said. Minaj also praised Adele on social media at the time, complimenting her delivery and “attitude & fingers to match.”
Thanks to the magic of television — and to really drive home the similarities — “Late Late Show” producers spliced together Minaj and Adele’s “Carpool” performances.
“She just naturally has that thing,” Minaj told Corden, resuming her faux accent. “But it’s different, you know. She’s singing these sad songs, so you don’t expect if from her. “
She and Corden then launched into a rendition of Adele’s Grammy-winning hit “Someone Like You.” Alas, it did not quite embody Adele.