In 2014, much ink was spilled debating whether rapper Nicki Minaj was making a bold feminist statement with her controversial song (and album cover) “Anaconda.”

That this conversation was happening around her music seemed to mark a moment for Minaj. Whether she intended it or not, the new album helped her transition from a rising star fighting to establish her place in the genre, to someone whose work might have an impact on a broader social and political debate.

Additional Images Nicki Minaj has more to say these days – in a Rolling Stone interview. Reuters

Now Minaj has more to say. This time she has opened up about two fairly controversial issues: her abortion as a teenager, and the recent wave of protests sparked by the deaths Michael Brown and Eric Garner.

In a revealing interview with Rolling Stone, Minaj discussed her pregnancy while in high school and her subsequent abortion.

Minaj has alluded to the experience in her earlier music, on a mixtape track that she said she “didn’t expect anyone to hear” according to the magazine.

But she explained in more detail that the unexpected pregnancy was the result of a relationship she had with an older New York man while she was a student at the LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts in Manhattan. The decision to end the pregnancy “haunted” her.

“I was a teenager. It was the hardest thing I’d ever gone through,” she said in the interview, which will be published Friday. “It’d be contradictory if I said I wasn’t pro-choice. I wasn’t ready. I didn’t have anything to offer a child.”

Minaj noted that millions of people are suddenly scrutinizing her every word.

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