By Justin Ivey • June 13, 2018

Nicki Minaj is featured on the cover of ELLE’s July issue, and the story has arrived online. In the interview, she delves into everything from her Queen album to ex-boyfriend Meek Mill’s legal battles.

While speaking about the upcoming LP, Black Barbie revealed the project will be notable for its boom bap beats as opposed to any trap production.

“It has to be 80s,” she said, recalling a conversation with her collaborator J. Reid. “It has to be boom bap. I don’t want to do no trap shit ’cause everybody’s doing that shit.”

Minaj believes it would’ve been too simple to make trap records for the album, which wouldn’t live up to the high bar she’s set for herself.

“I feel like true icons shift music, uplift music, switch music, have the balls to take a chance,” she noted. “The things that people do come so easy to me. I could do it in my sleep. But I’m such a perfectionist that when something is too easy to me, I actually feel guilty. It would’ve been so easy to listen to all the trap music out there right now and say, ‘Let me just copy this. But I wouldn’t have been able to live with myself.”

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