****Eaturheartout****

Born Onika Maraj in Jamaica, Queens, Minaj grew up with her parents and older brother and attended LaGuardia High (“the Fame school”) for acting. But despite the appearance of a nuclear family, behind the scenes was tumultuous, her father addicted to drugs and alcohol, and her mother supporting them on a nurse’s aid salary of $200 a week. “From a very early age, I didn’t know what peace was like,” she says. “I didn’t know what it was like to go to sleep and not know if something crazy was going to happen, so I think I was always kind of crazy, loud and random. My father was out of control. Stealing our furniture, selling it, stealing our money to get drugs.” Minaj’s mother held the family together, was her first strong female role model and fostered her interest in music. “My mother was my best friend all my life. We would sing together. I knew every Diana Ross by the age of eight. Nobody would expect me to know those songs, but my mom would be singing ‘I Hear a Symphony’ and all this crazy stuff. That’s what I grew up on, loving how music allowed me to escape.”