Last week Complex revealed that Kid Cudi would cover their Oct/Nov issue. Today that Nicki Minaj will join Cudi as the face of the next installment of the magazine. Declaring that she is not a cartoon, Complex goes in-depth with Nicki Minaj in an interview covering classic rap albums, her public persona, debut LP, and more.
On her image:
“It’s like you wear a pink wig and you’re no longer human all of sudden. You’re a thing. Like today [the photographer] was like, “Where is that Nicki Minaj smile?” But this shoot doesn’t call for the Nicki Minaj smile. You guys wanted me subdued, so I’m gonna give you a different side. I’m not gonna pull a string and be like, “It’s Barbie, bitch!”
On Lil’ Wayne:
“He really hasn’t had any involvement on it. But to be honest, the album doesn’t sound like Wayne. I mean, he’s my biggest influence, but it doesn’t sound like Wayne’s stuff. It sounds like Nicki.”
“I always keep Nicki Minaj separate from Young Money. I allow Wayne to call the shots when we do group albums, but when I do other things and have other choices, I don’t necessarily need everyone’s go-ahead. I write my own raps, I go in the studio by myself. There are some female rappers who can’t go in the studio unless they have a ghostwriter sitting right next to them. I’m the complete opposite—I’ll go in and ghostwrite for someone.”
On her different voices:
“I have no idea. I think Wayne kind of influenced that. He has always been really carefree when he raps and I was like, “I don’t have to stay in one cadence or stay in one tone when I rap—I can just do what I want.”
“Sometimes the shit I say is over people’s heads and I feel like I need to dumb it down a bit so people can understand it. I think if I had said a lot of raps in a particular voice, people would go, “Yo, that shit was hard”—but when you change up your voice a little bit, they can’t see past that.”
On Drake:
“He told me he said something about me on a verse, but I didn’t think it would be anything like that. He let me hear it for the first time when we did Jay’s show at Madison Square Garden, the day before Wayne had to go to jail—that night he let me hear it on the headphones. But you know what else he told me he wrote for me? The Alicia Keys song “I’m Ready.” I happen to love the song. I never told anyone that, I hope he won’t get mad that I said that.”
On sexuality:
“On “My Chick Bad,” I had to show people that I can spit a verse without sex or talking about how good I look. I’m actually timid when it comes to being overtly sexy, which is weird because in the beginning people thought of me like some freakin’ porn star. Guys reference sex all the time in their raps—I can’t even think of a record where Wayne doesn’t talk about sex—but when a female does it, people start tuning out. Then this gay dude the other day told me, “I say to dudes, ‘Maybe it’s time to put this pussy on your sideburns.'” I was crying laughing and I was like, “I can’t take this shit out of my act.” People live for that shit. [Laughs.] I just have to balance it a little bit.”
Read the full cover story here.