Vibe's Nicki Minaj Cover

Here’s Vibe’s new Nicki Minja cover for their June/July issue:

“People don’t get when you’re off, or you’re having a bad day,” she says, obliquely referring to the photograph that bounced around the blogs of her hand- in-hand with Diddy, looking especially miserable. The speculation was inevitable: Had she been crying? Was she just tired? Are they doing it?

“When I grew up I saw females doing certain things, and I thought I had to do that exactly,” she says. “The female rappers of my day spoke about sex a lot . . . and I thought that to have the success they got, I would have to represent the same thing. When in fact I didn’t have to represent the same thing.”