After unveiling their creative Wale and Jerry Seinfeld magazine cover yesterday and it's accompanying interview, Complex follows up today with another big star on the cover, Nicki Minaj. This is Nicki Minaj's second cover in recent times, she was also on Billboard recently.
The Pinkprint, of course, became a topic of conversation during the interview with Complex. Nicki speaks on the relation The Pinkprint has to Jay Z's The Blueprint, living in L.A., her family and more. Check out a few excerpts below, and head here to read the full cover story.
Images from the photoshoot with Nicki Minaj, who sports a short black bob for the shoot, are featured above.
You’ve said "The Pinkprint" will be your most personal album yet. What are you addressing about your past and present that you haven’t before?
My family, loss, death, guilt…. I’ve struggled with a lot of guilt.
Guilt over what?
When you’re working and you’re busy and you’re successful, no matter what, something suffers, whether it’s your relationship with your mother, your relationship with your whole family, not being able to go to your brother’s graduation…. Certain things suffer and take the back burner, not because they’re on the back burner in your heart but because the world just moves so quickly. A lot of people, when they’re chasing their dreams, they have to leave people they love. A lot of artists feel that guilt but they don’t express it.
Jay Z’s "The Blueprint" inspired the title "The Pinkprint" and the idea of laying the blueprint for female rappers to come. What similarities do you see between you right now and Jay circa "The Blueprint"?
I can’t. I have no idea what he was doing before The Blueprint dropped. It’s not that literal. People keep asking me about Jay’s The Blueprint and they think I’m doing something like that. I made reference to The Blueprint because Jay is the biggest rapper of our time. The name of the album was inspired by Jay but not the body of work. I do think that it’s going to create new rules, though, in [the way] that [The Blueprint did].
What did you want to accomplish with “Anaconda”?
I wanted to create a song that embraced curvy women. I wanted to be sexual but be playful with it. And I wanted it to be so melodic that even if you don’t understand English you could still go along with the melody and you would have no idea about all the raunchy shit I’m saying—I get a kick out of that. It was simple to write. I just created the melody and then I let the words happen. I started laughing when I said, “Boy toy named Troy.” [Laughs.] That whole song, I was just being dumb. It was a joke. My biggest thing was seeing how my girlfriends Sherika and Thembi were going to react. If they don’t like a song, they’ll be like, “No.” As soon as they walked in the studio, we were laughing and having fun. I thought, if we’re doing this, then everybody is going to have fun with it.