Nicki recently sat for an interview with BILLBOARD Magazine to promote PINK FRIDAY dropping on November 22.

On her last job:

“The last job I had was as an office manager in a little, tiny room where I literally wanted to strangle this guy because he was so loud and obnoxious,” Minaj recalls. “I would go home with stress pains in my neck and my back. That’s when I went to my mother and said, ‘Look, I’m not going back to work.’ I’d been fired like 15 times because I had a horrible attitude. I worked at Red Lobster before that and I chased a customer out of the restaurant once so I could stick my middle finger up at her and demand that she give me my pen back. I swear to God I was bad.”

On being a NY rapper:

“When I started rapping, people were trying to make me like the typical New York rapper, but I’m not that,” Minaj says. “No disrespect to New York rappers, but I don’t want people to hear me and know exactly where I’m from. I wanted the album to be universal and versatile. It really feels like it speaks for every one of my personalities.”

On getting respect in a male-dominated field:

“When I do songs like ‘Monster,’ when I’m on a record with Jay-Z and Kanye West, when I’m on a record with Wayne and Em — I definitely think the dudes give me respect,” Minaj says. “They haven’t come easy but I think people are starting to give me more props.”

On “Your Love”:

Although first official single “Your Love” reached No. 4 on Billboard’s Hot R&B/Hip-Hop Songs chart, the track wasn’t even meant to be released.

“I didn’t like the song and I didn’t put it out,” she says. “Someone stole it out of the studio and put it on the Internet and I cried because I was mortified. I was humiliated and remember telling Drake, ‘This is going to ruin my career.’ ”

On her work ethic:

“I push people around me but I don’t push anyone more than I push myself,” she says. “I tell people all the time, ‘You want to work for me? You have to give 250,000%,’ because when I’m in the booth, I don’t half-ass it. I demand perfection from everyone around me and if you can’t live up to that, then bye-bye.”