Nicki Minaj: ‘Not every sexy woman is out here twerking all damn day’
Over the past year, I’ve really started to be more of a Team Nicki Minaj person. It wasn’t that I flat-out disliked her before, I just thought her budget-Lady-Gaga shtick had worn thin. She got an image makeover more than a year ago, and she’s been steadily revealing more of the “real” Nicki Minaj, and it’s such an improvement. Minaj covers the new issue of Nylon to promote her role in the latest film from the Barbershop franchise, Barbershop: The Next Cut. It’s part of her movement towards mainstream, family-friendly success, and becoming the kind of multi-hyphenate talent that she’s always wanted to be. You can read the full Nylon piece here. Some highlights:
Her business: “Really being a boss is all about adding to your résumé. I’ve always been interested in business, and I’ve always been a businesswoman, before I had $10 to my name.”
Her affordable K-Mart fashion line: “I was embarrassed to wear low-priced things so it was important for me to make my fans feel like, ’You may not have all the money right now, but you better walk with your head held high and be confident, be proud of what you’re wearing, because you make the clothes.’”
The Meek Mill engagement rumors: “I’m not engaged yet. He said that my third ring would be my engagement ring. But sometimes he calls me his fiancée, and I’m always trying to stop him, like, ‘Nope! I ain’t got that third ring yet!’ We’re just taking it one step at a time. And, you know, if that happens, if I get married, then I’ll have a child, and that’ll be fun, because I can’t wait to hold my baby. When he and I were just friends, he would always say, ‘You remind me of my mother, and I like that because you’re like a dude. You’re tough like a guy and you talk like a dude.’ So I always got the sense that me being tough and bossy was a turn-on for him. And it’s important for me to keep my voice. Being in a relationship shouldn’t mean that you lose your voice. Being in a relationship should mean that you’ve met a secure-enough man to allow you, in a sense, to remain a queen.”
Her character in Barbershop: The Next Cut: “I wanted there to be a little bit of depth to Draya. I didn’t want her just to be, you know, an Instagram thot; I wanted her to have some sort of purpose and meaning.”
She refused to twerk in the movie: “Not every sexy woman is out here twerking all damn day.”
Choosing acting over music right now: “Musically, I feel very fulfilled, and now I can start tapping into my acting world, where it’s about passion and not about the money. It’s wanting to be what I set out to be when I was in high school: an actress.”
In the Nylon piece, there’s a lot of talk of how Minaj has the media “reputation” as some hard-charging diva, eager to throw down with other celebrities. But as Nylon points out, there’s a racial component to that image, plus Minaj has (historically) only reacted to controversies around her, like when other people sh-t talk her specifically. Like, the Miley Cyrus “What’s Good?” thing was a reaction to Miley’s NYT interview. And on and on. And I genuinely like what she says about her business, her goals, and her relationship, because that feels aimed at the younger, teenage girls reading this Nylon piece. So… can Minaj go for a family-friendly demo? I think she can. Totally.
Photos courtesy of Matt Irwin/Nylon.
