The hip-hop legend, who is one of the world's biggest-selling female rappers, has insisted she never had surgery but did have injectables to make her butt more voluptuous early in her career after Lil Wayne kept banging on about "big booties".
During an appearance on 'The Joe Budden Podcast', Nicki said: “It wasn’t acceptable to have surgery at all or anything. At that time, I had never had surgery. I had ass shots. I was in Atlanta at the time, and I kept on being around (Lil) Wayne and them. At that time, Wayne, he talking about big booties. Wayne would have a new chick in the studio every session, so it was always a new big booty there. They were his muses. But I just was around them all the time, and I was like the little sister with Wayne and Mack (Maine). All I would hear them talking about is big butts, and I didn’t feel complete or good enough - good as those girls because I’m like, ‘Oh my god, this is what you’re supposed to look like in the rap culture,’ and I don’t look like that.”
The 'Anaconda' hitmaker also claims she was one of the first female rappers to don a pink wig.
She told the host: “They think, ‘This is what I have to look like’. I remember I would never see any female rapper wearing pink hair. Pink hair became a part of that starter kit. Every female rapper will put on a pink wig at some point, and I remember that was just the Nicki Minaj thing. That’s why when I said, ‘Pink wig thick a**,’ that’s an iconic Nicki Minaj line because that’s what she wears. Now it’s everybody: pink wig, thick a**, right?”
Elsewhere in the discussion, the 39-year-old star admitted it's about time American Vogue made her a cover star.
She said: “You would think that right now hip-hop is the biggest, most influential genre in the world, you would think that the biggest female rapper of all time, who has set so many trends, would have been on the cover of American Vogue, but she hasn’t. When Billie Eilish comes out and sets a trend with her green hair, she’s immediately put on American Vogue. But when a Black female rapper who has been setting the trend for 10 years does it, no one says anything.
"A big part of the reason why we’re not represented is because - what I think we’re doing now, I think we’re all speaking up for each other. So I think now, we’ve all made it so, ‘No, people have to pay attention to what they’re doing, how they’re treating black artists and black people, and there has to be representation.”