Nicki Minaj unveiled her thoughts about getting plastic surgery following the release of the rapper's first Vogue cover story.
To celebrate the issue's release, the "Last Time I Saw You" artist appeared on the podcast The Run-Through with Vogue where she chatted with hosts Chioma Nnadi and Chloe Malle about enhancing her physique—though Minaj didn't go into detail about what procedures she had.
The mother of one said she "could not believe" that she disliked the way she looked in old pictures.
"I guarantee you, if you change anything on your body and do anything surgical and all this, you're going to—more than likely, not definitely, more than likely—look back one day and say, 'I was fine just the way I was," Minaj explained. "And that's what happened to me."
Minaj shared that she avoided looking at old photos because she didn't like "being skinny, having a flat butt," and "having boobs that didn't sit high enough." But the 40-year-old's perspective about her body changed upon giving birth to her now-3-year-old son, whom she affectionately calls "Papa Bear."
"Seeing my son did remind me of myself so much. My real self. And it made me think, 'Why didn't I like this?' So weird," Minaj told the hosts. "But seeing old photos, being able to look at old photos again made me realize, these old photos are beautiful."
In a 2022 sitdown with Joe Budden, Minaj addressed getting butt enhancements at the urging of Young Money Entertainment founder Lil Wayne. “Wayne would have a new chick in the studio every session, so it was always a new big booty,” Minaj said. “They were his muses. I wanna make sure I don’t downplay [the women] because they have a big part in the journey of a rapper’s career.”
View this video on YouTube
"I was around them all the time,” Minaj added about Young Money recording sessions in Atlanta. “All I would hear them talking about is big butts. I didn’t feel complete or good enough.”
Minaj joins a bevy of other Black women in entertainment who've opened up about cosmetic surgery, like SZA and Blac Chyna, who's spoken out against silicone injections. In April, celebrity plastic surgeon Dr. Miami also spoke to Complex about the BBL trend being on a decline.
"Within the next year, people will continue asking more for skinny BBLs and not the ginormous dump truck BBLs anymore," he said. "I think that trend is going to continue for a while. And same thing with fillers. People are learning how to moderate their filler consumption. There's a recession."
