Nicki Minaj Covers Vogue, Gets Candid about Addiction, Plastic Surgery, and Motherhood
It's hard to imagine that Nicki Minaj, the bestselling female rapper of all time, has never graced the cover of Vogue until now. Of course, the time is also right: after not having released a studio album since 2018's "Queen," she's about to bless her Barbz with "Pink Friday 2" next month, the long-awaited sequel of sorts to her record-breaking 2010 debut album.
In addition to chatting with Vogue about her profound sense of detail in the recording studio (her hit single "Anaconda" had 27 versions before she gave her final stamp of approval), motherhood, her tumultuous childhood, fame, and motherhood, Minaj also opened up about some deeply personal topics, including addiction.
Given that Minaj grew up with a crack-addicted father, she's been incredibly sensitive about what she puts in her body, with Vogue writing that she's the kind of girl that would nurse one drink at the club and pretend to be drunk and scold her friends for smoking weed. However, while living in Atlanta to try to work on her music career, she was prescribed Percocet for menstrual cramps. The problem was, they felt good, and she found herself taking them even when there wasn't any 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," she told Vogue. "I feel like if you've ever experienced addition to anything, which I have, you always have to think twice and three times about the choices that you make." She is also wary of the role that fame tends to play in addition. "Look at some of our biggest celebrities," she said. "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.'"
Vogue's interview with Minaj finds her remarkably down to earth and normal, shocking perhaps only because of her larger-than-life persona and frequently sexually explicit lyrics. But here, fans are afforded a glimpse into the woman behind the icon, a mother who crawls on the floor after her son, cooks dinner for her family, and—if you can believe it—even thinks twice about the size of her breasts and her butt, two features that are largely thought of as her trademarks. "Recently I had to get a breast reduction, and actually I love it," she said. "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."
But her interview is also full of insightful humor, such as when she waxes poetic about the difference between being mean and being a bitch: "When I hear the word mean, I think about the core of who the person is," she told Vogue. "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 the 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."
Check out more shots of Minaj's Vogue shoot here: