Nicki Minaj lands on Cosmopolitan‘s November 2020 issue. The 26-year-old superstar sits down for a chat with the magazine and dishes on a wide range of topics including her multiple alter egos. Born Onika Maraj, Nicki confesses in the interview with Cosmopolitan that she started creating these personalities since her childhood in order to escape from her parent’s endless fighting.
“Nicki is who I am onstage and who I was at that photo shoot. Onika is here with you in sweats,” she told the magazine.
Speaking about her family, Nicki recalls her father battling drug abuse. “My mother left him many different times and came back. He would beg, cry, stalk us…. One time, he pulled my mother out of a car and dragged her for two blocks. After that, I had a phobia about unlocked doors. Anywhere my mother and I were, I made sure the door was locked, because that was my only way to protect her,” the singer says.
The cruel reality made Nicki dream of an extraordinary life. “I would pray to God to make me famous so I could buy my mother a huge house. I’d tell her, ‘Let’s got to a ballroom, like Cinderella.’ She would laugh at me, but I knew I wasn’t put here to be a regular person,” Nicki told Cosmo.
After graduating from LaGuardia Arts, a high school for kids with exceptional potential, Nicki had many jobs and tried to start a music career. Still, she was rejected repeatedly and felt extremely discouraged. “I kept having doors slammed on my face. I felt like nothing was working. I had moved out of my own, and here I was thinking I’d have to go home. It was just one dead end after another. At one point, I was, like, ‘What would happen if I just didn’t wake up?’ That’s how I felt. Like maybe I should just take my life?”
Nevertheless, Nicki didn’t give up and managed to release her first album, ‘Pink Friday’, in November 2020. And after becoming part of the music industry, Nicki said to herself that she wouldn’t let any guy take advantage of her. “When you come into the business as a woman, you have to play a lot of mind games because the men can be very aggressive. It’s like chess – you have to protect your goods. Had I just started screwing the guys, it would’ve been over because they never would have taken me seriously,” she told Cosmo.
As for guys, Nicki says she doesn’t have a special type. “But I do like a dope node profile, one that’s straight on the side. And I like full lips. I’ve never kissed someone who didn’t have full lips,” the singer admits. Moreover, she adds that, “I may be smiling in their face, but my antenna is up…. When they’re trying to show off their cash or their watch, it’s an immediate turn-off.”
On her future, Nicky says that, “I’ll have hundreds of millions of dollars. I will have put out five albums and will have an Oscar and Grammys. And I will be getting married and, a couple of years after that, will have a bun in the oven.”
More from Nicki Minaj in the November 2020 issue of Cosmopolitan
Photos courtesy of Cosmopolitan