Nicki Minaj talks marriage trials, regretting plastic surgery in Vogue cover

Nicki Minaj is opening up about her marriage to Kenneth Petty and parenting their 3-year-old son.

Minaj, who is gearing up to release her upcoming album "Pink Friday 2" in December, spoke to Vogue in a cover interview published Thursday about the impact motherhood had on her music and her relationship.

Minaj married Petty, whom she'd known since high school, in October 2019 and they welcomed their son, whom she refers to with the pseudonym "Papa Bear," in October 2020.

"Because I've known my husband for so long, there’s an ease we have with each other. We make each other laugh. We're silly. And we're always reminiscing about some old story," the 40-year-old rapper told the outlet. "If it was a guy that I met as Nicki Minaj, I think I'd feel like they liked me because I'm Nicki Minaj, and what if I don’t look like Nicki Minaj every day? And that, combined with pregnancy, would probably have made me crazy."

The "Red Ruby Da Sleeze" rapper said that during the early days of having a newborn, she and Petty received little help from family.

"I'm not going to lie, things got testy between us," she recalled. "Because of our history, I think we knew we'd get past it. But there’s no such thing as confidence in parenthood."

Minaj did not address her husband's legal controversies. In September, Petty was placed on house arrest after threatening Migos rapper Offset in a video.

In a petition filed on Sept. 21 in the Central District of California U.S. District Court, a probation officer requested for Petty to participate in a home detention program for a period of up to 120 days as a result of his threat toward Offset in the video. The program may include "electronic monitoring, GPS, Alcohol Monitoring Unit or automated identification system."

"Mr. Petty was recorded on video making threatening remarks towards a specific individual while in the company of someone with a criminal record," the petition read.

Petty was previously sentenced to probation and house arrest for failing to register as a sex offender in July 2022. He was ordered to pay a $55,000 fine, in addition to spending three years on probation and a year in home detention, according to reports from NBC and CBS Los Angeles at the time.

Minaj's husband moved to Los Angeles in July 2019, but according to court documents, he knowingly failed to register as a sex offender as required by the Sex Offender Registration and Notification Act.

Nicki Minaj regrets plastic surgery after looking at old photos

Minaj opened up about regretting plastic surgery during an interview with Vogue's "The Run-Through with Vogue" podcast to celebrate the release of the cover.

Though she didn't go into specifics about what procedures she has undergone, she did say she "could not believe" not liking the way she looked in old photos.

"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,'" she told hosts Chioma Nnadi and Chloe Malle. "And that's what happened to me."

Minaj said that she didn't like looking at old photos because she didn't like "being skinny, having a flat butt" and "having boobs that didn't sit high enough."

She added that welcoming her son changed the perception she had of herself.

"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," she told the hosts. "But seeing old photos, being able to look at old photos again made me realize, these old photos are beautiful."

Nicki Minaj discusses how motherhood influenced her upcoming album

Minaj said she didn't intend to scare her fans, known as the Barbz, after tweeting in September 2019 that she planned to retire. Addressing that to Vogue, she said, "I think that deep down inside, I believed that once I had a family, I would just lose the desire to make music.

"I would always tell people, 'Watch, when I have a child I'm going to cook every meal for him and bake cookies every day.' Maybe subconsciously I hoped my focus would just be on being a mother, and I looked forward to that idea. It felt like a relief. But what happens is that you find out you have to work," she added.

Minaj recalled resonating with a story about a stay-at-home mom who felt unfulfilled as a homemaker and again once she re-entered the workforce.

"I was like, OMFG. She felt guilt when she was doing the perfect homemaker thing, and guilt as a working mom when she missed a moment in their lives," she said. "Maybe God let that lady say that to me because it made me think, 'Well, if I'm going to have mom guilt regardless, I might as well continue doing the only thing I know how to freaking do, which is make music.'"

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Minaj further discussed her son's influence on "Pink Friday 2" during an episode of Vogue's "73 Questions" series.

"Some of the songs started off being written about four years ago, there were songs … I couldn't record sexually explicit songs while I was pregnant so I ended up just getting turned off for a very long time and I had writer's block for a while, even after I had the baby," she recalled.

When it comes to the joys of being a parent, Minaj said, "Every single second of every single day learning that I was able to love on a whole other level."

Contributing: Edward Segarra, Taijuan Moorman

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This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Nicki Minaj in Vogue: Rapper on marriage, plastic surgery