The interview Nicki Minaj did for next month's edition of Rolling Stone is up on the Web, as is the high res cover photo (below) of Ms. Pinkprint in a wifebeater.
In the interview, Minaj gets pretty personal, discussing a teenage abortion that has "haunted me my entire life." She also addressed race, which seems to be the big topic lately in both Hip Hop and the national conversation.
According to Minaj, she was extremely upset about the death of fellow New Yorker Eric Garner at the hands of police. But she conceded that she was reluctant to speak out because she remembered what happened to Kanye West when he got on TV in the wake of the Katrina disaster and said then-President Bush "doesn't care about black people."
"I feel like when Public Enemy were doing 'Fight the Power,' we as a culture had more power — now it feels hopeless," Minaj explains. "People say, 'Why aren't black celebrities speaking out more?' But look what happened to Kanye when he spoke out. People told him to apologize to Bush!" “He was the unofficial spokesman for hip-hop, and he got torn apart. And now you haven’t heard him speaking about these [homicides and non-indictments], and it’s sad. Because how many times can you be made to feel horrible for caring about your people?"Do you agree with Minaj that (a) black celebrities haven't been speaking out and that (b) the threat of a backlash makes it a "hopeless" situation?