The 40-year-old Trinidad and Tobago-born rapper Nicki Minaj is a lightning rod. The recent host of the 2023 MTV Video Music Awards, Minaj is one of those people many fans either love or hate. It seems she’s either spitting an incredible rap or bickering with someone online.
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But all that drama aside, Minaj is truly one of the best rappers ever. She has a sharp, quick tongue, a knack for wordplay and she’s a magnet for eyeballs and ears. She’s a star if there ever was one. Given all that, though, one might wonder what the artist has to say about the world around her, life and love, her craft and more. Here are the 20 best Nicki Minaj quotes.
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1. “I want people—especially young girls—to know that in life, nothing is going to be based on sex appeal. You’ve got to have something else to go with that.”
2. “My rule is, whatever you were calling me four years ago is what you should be calling me now because I don’t like it when my family or close friends call me Nicki Minaj. To me, I’m not Nicki Minaj when I’m with them.”
3. “Female rappers get it the hardest. You have to be a girl, yet you have to be just as hard as the guys. I think some female rappers get scared out of the business before they can make it.”
4. “When I get up in the morning and put on a pink or a green wig, I see myself as a piece of animation. It lets me be the person I want to be, a person who’s not embarrassed to have fun.”
5. “I vowed that I’d never allow any man to control me or to be an alcoholic or anything like that around me, because I don’t want my children seeing that.”
6. “Your victory is right around the corner. Never give up.”
7. “Maybe your weird is my normal. Who’s to say?”
8. “My happiness doesn’t come from money or fame. My happiness comes from seeing life without struggle.”
9. “You should never feel afraid to become a piece of art. It’s exhilarating.”
10. “People face difficulties, no matter who you are. I faced difficulties with a lot of things. I face opposition every day, but I didn’t kill myself and now, thank God, I’m here.”
11. “If I’m traveling, I’ll pack socks in my bag—really cute furry ones.”
12. “I don’t mind being called a weirdo. There are a lot of people in hip-hop who are probably never going to get what I do. But, by just being myself, I end up touching a lot more people who might never have paid much attention to a female rapper.”
13. “I don’t agree that everyone should agree with everyone’s lifestyle. I think that some people aren’t going to agree, but I think that when you’re mean and when you ridicule people it’s a sign of your own insecurities.”
14. “I think sometimes the fashion world isn’t even about clothes anymore; it’s about this ‘in’ crowd, and I’m not into that.”
15. “If people are sitting in the barbershop talking about my butt, it’s conversational. That’s what people are gonna do.”
16. “I don’t want children cursing. I’m very strict on my nieces and my little brother. They have to listen to clean versions of music. Even my music.”
17. “You wanna know what scares people? Success. When you don’t make moves and when you don’t climb up the ladder, everybody loves you because you’re not competition.”
18. “When you’re a girl, you have to be everything, You have to be dope at what you do, but you have to be super sweet, and you have to be sexy, and you have to be this and you have to be that and you have to be nice, and you have to—it’s like, I can’t be all of those things at once. I’m a human being.”
19. “I’ve always had this female empowerment thing in the back of my mind–because I wanted my mother to be stronger, and she couldn’t be.”
20. “When I was younger I didn’t have much financially, like we couldn’t afford a lot of stuff and I remember seeing little girls’ rooms on TV and they’d all be pink. I didn’t have my own room, I shared with my brother, so I would have this daydream and imagine that one day I could have my own room and it would all be pink, like Cinderella’s.”
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