Despite her rather aggressive facade and fiery personality, Nicki Minaj, like any other person in the world, has her own set of vulnerabilities. The Queen of Rap has publicly shared her sadness and pain when her father passed away due to an accident.
Now, Minaj expounds how that accident affected her and contributed to her songwriting process in making perhaps her most vulnerable song yet.
Nicki Minaj Final Interaction With Her Father
Speaking to Apple Music Ebro Darden, Nicki Minaj opened up on how she started writing "Are You Gone Already?," the opening track of her chart-topping album, "Pink Friday 2."
Apparently, the song was inspired by her last interaction with her father, Robert Maraj, who died in an accident last February 2021.
"So right after I had the baby, and it was during corona, and nobody knew what was going on," Minaj recalled. "But that day, as I'm rocking him, the phone rings, and I see it's my father. I normally would not have picked up, because I don't like to be on the phone with the baby there. I would've called him back. Something said, 'Pick up the phone.'"
When Minaj picked up the phone, she noticed that her father was "very happy" and had told her that he would be coming to California to visit her and her baby, Papa Bear.
"He wasn't really happy, but I knew that, when he came [to] be with us, we were going to be happy," she went on to say. "He is this amazing, great person, who livens up the whole house. I was like, 'Yes, we were going to get help.'"
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Nicki Minaj, Robert Maraj Relationship
Unbeknownst to many, Nicki Minaj and her father have quite a complicated relationship. In a Vogue interview, Minaj recalled that her father had been addicted to cocaine when she was younger.
Looking back, Minaj said she wished she understood her father as people with addiction didn't do drugs to hurt their families, but rather addiction took over them and they were also victims.
Later that night, Nicki received a call from her mother who had told her that her father got into an accident.
"It was my mother, telling me that my father was in an accident and that she didn't know what was going to happen, and she would call me back. And then, everything started spinning," Minaj who "couldn't believe" how everything happened so fast remembered.
He was the happiest that I had heard him in a long time," she went on to say.
Later on, the track "Are You Gone Already?" was made, and it was the opening track to "Pink Friday 2," which she says is important to start the album with her speaking to her father.
The song also sampled Billie Eilish's "when the party's over."
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