Entertainment news : Nicki Minaj chats with HITS Daily Double for their Q&A with this year's Grammy-nominated artists

She is nominated for three awards, including
Best Rap Album and in the interview discusses
'The Pinkprint' album and more.

In every category you’re nominated you are the
sole female against an ocean of men. Respect.
What would winning the Grammy Award mean to
you personally?
Thank you. Winning a Grammy would inspire
women to continue to rap and write and to never
give up. I’ve put so many years into this culture
that I often feel is overlooked. Prior to my three
albums, I put out three mixtapes, which also
changed the game for women in rap. I would
literally sit in a room for days and write, and my
sole purpose was to be better than the boys and
to prove that women are just as smart, creative,
witty, business-savvy, etc. I never really felt that
male rappers saw us as their equals. I was
determined to change that.

What connects you to a song that makes you feel,
“This one is special ?”
I love feeling like a song is ripped out of a page in
my diary. The intro to The Pinkprint feels like that
to me: a song called “All Things Go.” It takes me
away to a dark yet hopeful place—a secret place.
Whenever I bare my soul on a song, I feel like it’s
special. Those records don’t usually become
singles, but they are the heart of the album.
Songs like that and “I Lied,” “The Crying Game”
and “Grand Piano.” If Adele were to sing “Grand
Piano,” a lot more people would listen to it and be
able to understand the significance of it. They’d
really be able to understand the heartbreaking
story that so many of us deal with in
relationships.

When you first started collaborating with Wayne
and Drake, what surprised you the most about
their process?
Well, I loved the fact that Wayne didn’t write his
lyrics down—he just memorized them. In the
studio, he’d stress the importance of me writing
my verses quicker than I’d become accustomed
to. So it made me better and more confident. With
Drake, he spent a lot of time narrowing down the
actual beat he wanted to rap on. It was great for
a young artist to pay attention to that.

Does the beat decide the rhyme, or are you
coming with a concept regardless of how the music sounds?
I think the beat writes the entire song.

In making The Pinkprint , what came easily and what was the hardest to deal with?
The easy part was the desire to give the people
new music. So I enjoyed going to the studio and
creating every day. I would get lost in the music. I
would be excited just thinking about how my fans
would react to certain records. The hard part was
telling my truth. Once you bare your soul, you feel
very vulnerable. Especially when you’re used to
being private. But I really felt the need to
document this period of my life and to create my
own “pink print.” I literally cried in the booth and
cried while writing; but it’s my favorite album to
date.

Posted by tboixy