If Nicki Minaj could turn back time, she wouldn’t have gone under the knife.
The 40-year-old rapper reflected on her decision to get plastic surgery during the Thursday, November 9, episode of “The Run-Through With Vogue” podcast, which coincided with her November 2023 cover.
“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 just fine the way I was,’” Minaj told podcast hosts Chioma Nnadi and Chloe Malle. “That’s what happened to me. I could not believe even some of the photos that I didn’t love.”
Minaj went on to share that during the early days of her career, she didn’t “like” the way she “looked.”
“I didn’t like being skinny, having a flat butt, you know. Having boobs that didn’t sit high enough. It was a lot of things,” Minaj explained. “And when I look back at myself now, I literally was like, ‘Oh, I’m about to look like that girl again.’”
She continued, “The reason why I wasn’t able to look back at my old photos was I didn’t like the way I looked, right, physically.”
Now, Minaj loves the way she used to look.
While Minaj did not explicitly share what work she’s had done, she has admitted to getting ass shots in the past. She told Nnadi and Malle that motherhood has helped her look at herself in a different way.
“I think pregnancy could’ve played a role because seeing my son did remind me of myself so much. My real self,” she said. “And it made me think, ‘Why didn’t I like this?’ So weird. But seeing old photos, being able to look at old photos again made me realize, ‘These old photos are beautiful.’”
Minaj welcomed her son, who she affectionately calls “Papa Bear,” in September 2020 with husband Kenneth Petty.
The couple, who first dated as teenagers and reconnected in 2018, tied the knot in October 2019. “Nicki is absolutely head over heels in love with Kenny,” a source told Us Weekly at the time. “She fell hard and fast. She hasn’t smiled this much in a long time.”
