Nicki Minaj is opening up about her life and legacy.
The 40-year-old “Anaconda” superstar graces the cover of the December 2023 issue of Vogue Magazine, out on newsstands on November 21.
During the conversation, Nicki spoke candidly about addiction, her late father, her husband Kenneth Petty, raising their son “Papa Bear,” and her true thoughts about how she is perceived in pop culture.
On “Last Time I Saw You”:
“It’s a song about guilt. And I don’t think people make a lot of music about the experience of guilt. But if you talk to any human being on earth about it, they would know exactly what you mean. That ‘I wish I had’ feeling. Once I wrote the hook, I started to think of people that I love and see every day and still take for granted. You know what I’m saying? So I hope the song does a good thing. It’s like, remember how you wish you could have? Well, you can’t. You can’t go back in time. So try to make sure you have different experiences with people that you love. All the grudges, even just being busy and caught up, like when you’re chasing and working and being an adult…I’m not saying I want this to be a sad song. Actually I want people to feel happy when they hear it. Happy-sad. Then again, look at Adele. That woman has made me cry a million times, yet I want more.”
On Pink Friday 2:
“When I look back at a lot of my music, I’m like, Oh, my God, where was the me in it? So for this album, I went back to the old game plan.”
On the three years leading up to Pink Friday:
“Not knowing if you’re going to be broke, not knowing if you’re going to be a failure, there’s nothing more complicated than that.”
On public perceptions:
“I think a lot of creators will understand this. There’s a freeness that you have around you when you’re at your best, when you’re doing your thing at your peak. There’s like this lightness in the air. You’re happy even if you’re writing a sad song. But once you start knowing that you’re being judged, there’s no longer that free spirit. People who excel at something make it look easy, but they also deal with a lot of fear of letting people down and of letting themselves down. Once you make it, it’s like anything you say can be used against you. It’s like when you get arrested—that’s literally what being famous feels like. You go from having this fun, curious nature, laughing and joking, to realizing not everyone gets your sense of humor, not everyone likes you. And they will figure out how to put a negative spin on anything you do. It hurts.”
On her husband Kenneth Petty:
“Because I’ve known my husband for so long, there’s an ease we have with each other. We make each other laugh. We’re silly. And we’re always reminiscing about some old story. If it was a guy that I met as Nicki Minaj, I think I’d feel like they liked me because I’m Nicki Minaj, and what if I don’t look like Nicki Minaj every day? And that, combined with pregnancy, would probably have made me crazy.”
On marriage and motherhood:
“I think that deep down inside, I believed that once I had a family, I would just lose the desire to make music. I would always tell people, ‘Watch, when I have a child I’m going to cook every meal for him and bake cookies every day.’ Maybe subconsciously I hoped my focus would just be on being a mother, and I looked forward to that idea. It felt like a relief. But what happens is that you find out you have to work.”
On the early days of raising her son, whom she refers to publicly as Papa Bear, with her husband:
“I’m not going to lie, things got testy between us. Because of our history, I think we knew we’d get past it. But there’s no such thing as confidence in parenthood. I kind of wish that someone had told me—although I’m sure I wouldn’t have been able to understand it—that there’s a level of anxiety, and you think it’s going to go away, but in fact it gets scarier. So often you think: I don’t know how to do this!”
On meeting a woman who expressed guilt for being an at-home mom and a working mom:
“I was like, OMFG. She felt guilt when she was doing the perfect homemaker thing, and guilt as a working mom when she missed a moment in their lives. Maybe God let that lady say that to me because it made me think, Well, if I’m going to have mom guilt regardless, I might as well continue doing the only thing I know how to freaking do, which is make music.”
On her humble childhood:
“You figure out the value of money when you come from a different country, and then you don’t have what the other kids have. Children know a lot more than you think regarding poverty…a girl I considered a friend of mine—in front of all these people—looks at me and says, ‘You think your mother could afford that?’ When you hear things like that, you put them somewhere in your subconscious, and you make yourself a promise.”
On the prayer she remembers saying as a child:
“God, please make me rich so I can buy my mother another house and take care of my family.”
On her late father’s crack, alcohol and weed addictions:
“I think about watching my father go back and forth, and I just wish that at the time I understood that he wasn’t doing it because he wanted to. I thought that he was making a conscious effort to be addicted to a drug that would have him steal his children’s video games and sell them for money. Think about that—who would make a conscious effort to do that? Now I realize, those people weren’t making those choices because they wanted to hurt their family. Addiction took over their bodies and their lives. They were victims too.”
On running her house by the age of 11:
“I had adult burdens way too early, but I had tunnel f-cking vision. I literally told everybody that by the time I turned 19, I would be just as famous as Halle Berry and Jada Pinkett, and no one could tell me any different. So when I went to auditions and didn’t get parts, I was shocked. I would sit by the phone thinking, I know they’re gonna call; everybody’s gonna love me and see how great I am. I didn’t get one callback. But at the same time I was like, Eff this sh-t, I need money.”
On not partying hard, and being teased by her friends for nursing a single cocktail and swearing she was drunk:
“I feel like I will always consider myself to be just like my father.”
On briefly living in Atlanta and being prescribed Percocet for menstrual cramps years ago, which she began taking even when she wasn’t in pain:
“No one told me that this was a narcotic and this was addictive. Luckily I was able to ground myself. But—once an addict, always an addict. I feel like if you’ve ever experienced addiction to anything, which I have, you always have to think twice and three times about the choices that you make.”
On substance abuse and celebrity:
“Look at some of our biggest celebrities. They eventually either get laughed out of wanting to go outside anymore, like Michael Jackson, or criticized, like Whitney Houston, or they fight silent battles, like Prince. These are some of the greatest of all time. And one day they decided, ‘You know what? I’d rather self-medicate and be in my own world.’ Should you keep on doing interviews and pouring out your heart so people can laugh? No.”
On being inspired by Michael Jordan’s 2020 documentary The Last Dance:
“I realized that Jordan made the right decision by biting his tongue earlier, when he was in the game. If I could go back and maybe save some of those things I said for later, like Jordan did, yes. Maybe I would have. Maybe I should have. I don’t know. Most people don’t want to hear you talking all day anyway. People want the art you offer. Somehow now I look back, and I think about the things that I used to care about, the things that used to ruin my day, and I can’t believe I let those miscellaneous things stop me from focusing. For sure that’s progress, right?”
On her shift in perspective:
“When you look around and try to keep yourself in a grateful frame of mind, the things that you can be thankful for seem to start adding up, and you realize that in the big scheme of things, most of the stuff you would have complained about is so trivial. It’s been a constant race. But then you stop and realize, there’s nothing to run around for. That’s the thing that’s changed in me. It’s not that I’ve taken these amazing steps. It’s just about finally being happy with who you are as opposed to where you are.”
On her body, a breast reduction and body positivity:
“I just looked at a video that I posted on Instagram when I was 25, and I would f-cking pay to look like that right now. But today I can say that I’m at peace with who I am and how I look. I have to say this as a Black woman, though. I’ve made certain choices for my son, to not give him sweets and candy and juices, because of illnesses like diabetes that run in our community. I’m not in favor of body positivity if it means unhealthy bodies. That’s bull. It’s not believable, so let’s stop pretending. Recently I had to get a breast reduction, and actually I love it. I used to want a bigger butt, and now I look back and realize how silly that was. So—love your curves, and love your non-curves. There’s nothing wrong with any of it.”
On connecting with other people, and social media:
“There are questions that you can’t just Google. Every day a mom has to wake up and be a supermom no matter what they’re faced with….it’s gotten so easy to be alone physically, where young people spend 12, 16 hours a day in their rooms on their phones, looking at these false realities, comparing themselves. I’ve seen artists gone way too soon, and I wonder if that could have been avoided if they’d just had the chance to talk about what they were going through.”
On going viral for questioning the COVID vaccine, and not aligning with a political party:
“I’m one of those people who doesn’t go with a crowd. I like to make my own assessment of everything without help from everyone…every time I talk about politics, people get mad. I’m sorry, but I am not going to be told who I should get on social media and campaign for. There’s a lot we don’t know that’s going on in the government, and I don’t think it changes whether you lean to the left or right.”
On the idea that she is not nice:
“When I hear the word mean, I think about the core of who the person is. I always tell people that the difference between being mean and being a bitch is that bitch passes. Bitch comes and goes. Mean is who you are. I could be the biggest bitch, at the height of my bitch-ness, but if the person I may be cussing out at that time needs something from me, I’m going to give it to them. I have to be able to look in the mirror and be okay with myself.”
On her alter egos:
“I think of her more like the Superman suit, like who you change into when you go into the telephone booth. They’re completely different entities.”
On her life now:
“You know that feeling when you unlock one of the secrets of life? For me the idea of accepting what you can’t change—it just never clicked with me before. You want to have control over everything, but that’s the easiest way to be unhappy. So now, if I find myself trying to control it all, I try to remember what’s really important. I look in my son’s face, and my whole soul lights up. He has no clue how nerve-racking it’s been for me to be a mother and an artist.”
