Nicki Minaj Nylon Magazine April Beauty Issue Cover Revealed
Opens Up About Engagement Rumors with Meek Mill & Her Longtime Acting Aspirations
Superstar rapper and actor, Nicki Minaj covers Nylon Magazine’s April issue, which hits stands in two weeks. The issue is the magazine’s beauty issue. Minaj opens up for a revealing interview with Nylon, where she discusses Meek Mill, the engagement rumors, taking giant leaps in her acting career, including the new role in Barbershop: The Next Cut and much more. The Nicki Minaj Nylon Magazine cover is above.
Nicki also provides readers with exclusive details on Nicki, the new Freeform comedy inspired by her life, which she has signed on to executive produce. See select quotes from the story below and read the full story on NYLON.com now.
On handpicking newcomer Ariana Neal to play a tween version of her on Nicki: “I’ve never seen a little girl rapping on scripted TV,” says Minaj, who punches up Neal’s raps “so that older people are gonna respect her as a little rapstress.”
Following a breakup, The Pinkprint was emotionally unstable; her next material will be happy: “I needed time to hear myself think again,” she says, “because where I left off with The Pinkprint was a little bit emotionally unstable…Now, I want my happiness to be reflected in the new stuff.”
On the Meek Mill engagement rumors her rings spark: “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.”
On how Meek Mill accepts and empowers her: “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.”
On the nuanced feminism she brought to Draya, her character in Barbershop: The Next Cut: “I wanted there to be a little bit of depth to Draya,” says Minaj. “I didn’t want her just to be, you know, an Instagram thot; I wanted her to have some sort of purpose and meaning.”
On refusing to do a twerking scene in Barbershop: “Not every sexy woman is out here twerking all damn day,” she says with a laugh.
The women she looked up to in her teens: Minaj smiles when asked to recall her acting days at New York’s Fiorello H. LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts. “At that time I was obsessed with Jada Pinkett [Smith]—I wanted to be Jada and Halle [Berry] mixed. Now I’m going back to those desires.”
Check out the full feature at nylon.com
Images by Matt Irwin
