This Artist- Nicki Minaj

All About Nicki Minaj

Quick Facts:

• NAME: Nicki Minaj
• OCCUPATION: Rapper
• BIRTH DATE: December 08, 1982 (Age: 30)
• EDUCATION: La Guardia High School of Music and Art
• PLACE OF BIRTH: Saint James, Trinidad and Tobago
• ORIGINALLY: Onika Tanya Maraj
• AKA: Nicki Minaj
• AKA: Onika Maraj
• AKA: "Cookie"
• AKA: "Harajuku Barbie"
• ZODIAC SIGN: Sagittarius

Biography:

 Hip-hop artist and singer Nicki Minaj was born Onika Tanya Maraj on December 8, 1982, in Saint James, Trinidad and Tobago, and moved with her family to Queens, New York, when she was 5 years old. Minaj's father was a severe drug addict with a long history of violence. At one point, he set fire to the family's home in a failed attempt to kill Minaj's mother. Those early struggles, Minaj has said, helped fuel her drive to rise above the life her parents knew. "I've always had this female-empowerment thing in the back of my mind," she told Details magazine, "because I wanted my mother to be stronger, and she couldn't be. I thought, 'If I'm successful, I can change her life.'"

To reach that point, however, the young Minaj developed personas for herself that would allow her to be a "new person." An early incarnation was someone she called "Cookie," then came "Harajuku Barbie," before finally settling on Nicki Minaj. "Fantasy was my reality," she has said. Minaj clearly had a knack for performance. At the age of 12, she authored her first rap, then went on to delve into acting at La Guardia High School of Music and Art, the school that inspired the movie Fame.