The long-awaited return of Nicki Minaj is finally here after the Young Money Queen dropped two highly anticipated singles.
During her premiere of her two new single “Chun Li” and “Barbie Tingz” and interview with Beats 1 Radio’s Zane Lowe, Nicki addresses her social media hiatus and why she took the time out to hone her craft and create a great album.
“I needed to focus on my album. This is the best album I’ve ever in my life ever ever ever created,” Nicki said. “I needed to focus. And I just didn’t know. You know, I wanted to make sure I was writing something that was meaningful to me and that would inspire and that would captivate my audience. But most importantly, I wanted to have fun again.”
Nicki also revealed that the negativity from social media played a huge role in her decision to take it back to the basics and go off the grid during her creative process.
“I wanted to go in the studio and have fun, without giving a shit. I didn’t want to see anything. You know, I wasn’t only not posting, but I also took all forms of social media off my phone, and it actually was the most genius decision I ever made for myself, as a human being, because it gave me peace and it put my focus back on what it needed to be on, which is the music. When I was doing mixtapes, I wasn’t on Instagram. I’m not like these artists that are out now that have the luxury of you know, Instagram, you know. Twitter was just starting off. So I was like why am I including this information and taking this information into my spirit? I don’t need to see what people are saying about me. I don’t need to know what people are saying about anything, really.”
Despite Nicki being in a new place creatively, she did take some time to air out her grievances against Bronx rapstress Cardi B and Migos, who Minaj claims used her name for clout and called out Cardi for “not showing enough respect” during her rise to fame.
“The first interview [Cardi B] did after the first interview she did after ‘MotorSport’ came out, it just really hurt me,” Nicki continued. “Cause she looked so aggravated and angry and the only thing she kept saying was, ‘Oh, I didn’t hear that verse, I didn’t hear that verse. She changed her verse. With ‘MotorSport,’ I kinda felt ambushed. I love Quavo, and at the time, on Twitter, I explained how “Motorsport” came about, and you know, people were saying that I was lying. So I texted Quavo and I said, ‘Hey, just, you know, could you back me up on this because I don’t want people to think I’m lying. What do I have to lie about? And he didn’t back me up. He texted me, and he was like, ‘I would go on Twitter and back you up if you were my girl lol.’ And that hurt, because he’s somebody—I love him.”
In regards to Meek Mill and his legal fight, Nicki revealed that she has been super supportive of her ex and that no matter what happened between them he didn’t deserve to be in the legal battle that he has been in over the last year.
“I don’t want to as well go out legal things, but I will say that every now and then I think about… anyway. I won’t go there. I’ll save some of those things from my album and I’m also shooting a documentary. But what I will say now is that the judge in question was did everything I asked of her. And you know, so I can’t bad mouth her because I met her personally. I know what she said to us and he knows that and I know that. But of course, I wouldn’t wish that — I wouldn’t wish jail on anybody. But, like I said I’ll get into detail in the documentary and possibly on the album, but what I will say is what made me shed tears the other day was his seeing his mother cry. Seeing his mother crying was the first time I was like, oh my God, like, I can’t take it. She, during our relationship, was always so sweet to me and even at the end, when I was when we kind of both knew that I was like you know too rocky, too bad… she always just showed me so much love. So I still care about her, I didn’t like seeing her cry the other day.”
Check out the new singles below and the full interview here.
