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Nicki Minaj is gearing up for her fourth studio album, which she says will reflect the fact that she’s “genuinely happy” at this point in her life. Holding down one of seven covers for T: The NYTimes Style Magazine’s ‘The Greats’ issue, the hip hop vet detailed the difference between The Pinkprint and what she has up next.

“Sonically, I know what the album’s about to sound like,” she said. “I know what this album is gonna mean to my fans. This album is everything in my life coming full circle and me being truly, genuinely happy. It feels almost like a celebration. The last album, The Pinkprint, was almost like my diary, closing the chapter on certain things and not knowing if I was happy or sad about beginning new chapters. I was really writing about feeling unsure. Now, I can tell you guys what happened for the last two years of my life. I know who I am. I am getting Nicki Minaj figured out with this album and I’m loving her.”

Nicki also spoke a little bit about what it’s like to come up in the game as a Black, female rapper, saying “I kind of love that I’ve had to go through so many hurdles to get where I am because I feel like I deserve it. I had so much going against me in the beginning: being black, being a woman, being a female rapper. No matter how many times I get on a track with everyone’s favorite M.C. and hold my own, the culture never seems to want to give me my props as an M.C., as a lyricist, as a writer. I got to prove myself a hundred times, whereas the guys that came in around the same time as I did, they were given the titles so much quicker without anybody second-guessing.”

She says this is the “most inspired and free and excited I’ve been since I started releasing albums through a label.” She insists she’s no longer second-guessing her music. “… artists do it to themselves,” she tells T Magazine. “I’m not going to blame a label. You just overthink. When you’re doing your own little thing, you feel like, I can be myself, I can be crazy. When you start working with a record company, you start thinking you need a bigger sound. I wanted to get back to the place where I wasn’t second-guessing things so much. Sometimes simple is O.K.”

Check out some of the photos from her cover shoot above and stay tuned for more details on her forthcoming project.

The Greats: Nicki Minaj Covers T Magazine & Dishes About Her Fourth Studio Album  was originally published on globalgrind.com