You’re one of the most active artists on social media — you have over 80 million Instagram followers, 21 million followers on Twitter, 42 million on Facebook — and your posts, likes and re-tweets seem to all come from you. How in the world do you have time to do all that?

I’ve always been very active with my fans, and so they expect me to speak to them when I put out something new. They expect me to ask their opinions, and they’re usually really excited when something comes out so they wanna have the chance to express themselves, and I like to give them that opportunity. But there are times where I take social media completely off my phone. I think that it’s important to deactivate sometimes and unplug yourself from the matrix, because as great as it’s been for my career, it can be unhealthy to certain people as well. If you don’t know how to control your emotions, if you don’t know how to think before you speak, it can also get you in a lot of trouble.
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THE DAY I WAIT in the hotel lobby of the Ritz-Carlton in Battery Park City to meet Nicki Minaj is the start of New York Fashion Week. I am early, and I watch as stylists push an overfull rack of designer clothes out of the elevator. I later learn they are from Alexander Wang, and are dressing Minaj for the designer’s show.
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Nicki is on the cover of The New York Times Magazine for October 2015. I’ve also added two new photos from session.

Nicki Minaj is the world’s biggest female hip-hop star, a top pop star and the first woman to achieve success in both genres. Like Beyoncé, who performed recently in Central Park with the words ‘‘boss’’ and ‘‘hustler’’ flashing on screens behind her, along with a grainy video in which she smashed a vacuum and a sewing machine, Minaj has become expert at modeling the ways that women can wield power in the industry. But she has also drawn attention to the ways in which power can be embodied by a woman standing up for herself and speaking her own mind. Minaj’s behavior isn’t exclusive to her tracks; she also exhibits it in the national telenovela that she, like the rest of these women, to a greater or lesser degree, is running about herself, feeding the public information about her paramours, ex-paramours, peccadilloes and beefs, all of it delivered in social media’s short, sharp bursts.