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Nicki Minaj Reflects on How Father’s Death Inspired ‘Pink Friday 2’ & What Led to Drake’s Feature on ‘Needle’

The track was originally meant to appear on For All the Dogs, but there was a change in plans.

Nicki Minaj Reflects on How Father’s Death Inspired ‘Pink Friday 2’ & What Led to Drake’s Feature on ‘Needle’

Nicki Minaj‘s latest album, Pink Friday 2, became a certified hit on the Billboard 200 following its release in December, spawning several fan-favorite tracks like “Everybody (feat. Lil Uzi Vert)” and “Needle (feat. Drake).” The album, however, opened up with the emotive track “Are You Gone Already,” which Minaj explained in her Thursday (Jan. 4) interview with Apple Music was inspired by the sudden loss of her father in 2021.

“My father had just passed. So right after I had the baby, and it was during Corona [the pandemic], and nobody knew what was going on, so, one day, I was rocking the baby and I don’t normally have the phone on me when I’m rocking him,” she told Ebro.


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Minaj continued, “But that day, as I’m rocking him, the phone rings, and I see it’s my father. … I picked up, he was very happy, and he was like, ‘Baby, I could come on Monday.’ Because he had been waiting to be able to come to Cali to help me. I kept on saying, ‘Come on out.’ He wasn’t really happy, but I knew that when he came to be with us, we were going to be happy.”

Later that night, the rapper explained, she woke to a phone call from her mother stating that her father had been killed in a hit-and-run car accident. Paralyzed by the news, Minaj fainted — “After I had my baby was the first time in my life that I ever fainted; I never knew what it felt like to faint” — and recalled that she had multiple dreams in the past about someone she loved getting into an accident, with one occurring just two days before her father died.

The grief Minaj experienced inspired the track, down to its title. She explained that while on the phone with him hours before the incident that claimed he life, she uttered the name of the track to him. “He was the happiest that I had heard him in a long time. … What was interesting, why I said, ‘Are you gone already?’ is because I knew he was gone already,” she said.

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Elsewhere in the interview, Minaj spoke about working with Drake on “Needle” and noted that the track was initially meant to appear on For All the Dogs, but there was a change of plans.

“He told the fans at his tour that I was going to be on his album. And actually, the song he was talking about was ‘Needle,'” she explained. “But he ended up feeling like sonically it didn’t match For All the Dogs. And I, from day one, felt like it matched Pink Friday 2.”

While some fans were upset at the lack of Minaj on Drake’s record, she said the change “worked out for the best.”

Watch Nicki’s full interview with Ebro for Apple Music in the video below:

This article was first published by Billboard U.S.

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Kneecap Blasts Norwegian Government at Oslo Festival, Accusing It of Funding ‘Genocide’ Against Palestinians
Matt Cardy/Getty Images

Mo Chara, DJ Provaí and Móglaí Bap of Kneecap performs on the West Holts Stage during during day four of Glastonbury Festival 2025 at Worthy Farm, Pilton on June 28, 2025 in Glastonbury, England.

Music News

Kneecap Blasts Norwegian Government at Oslo Festival, Accusing It of Funding ‘Genocide’ Against Palestinians

The Irish rap trio went after the Norwegian government over its investments, which are currently under scrutiny, at Øyafestivalen.

Irish rap group Kneecap – which has drawn a storm of criticism, support, attention and legal action over the past half-year – continued to speak out about the war in Gaza during an afternoon set at the Øyafestivalen in Oslo, Norway, on Friday (Aug. 8).

Right before the trio of Mo Chara, Móglaí Bap and DJ Próvaí took the stage, an English-language white-text-on-black-background message played on a video screen, accusing the Norwegian government of “enabling” the “genocide” against the Palestinian people via investments held in the county’s sovereign wealth fund (referenced as “oil pension fund” in the message). “Over 80,000 people have been murdered by Israel in 21 months,” the band’s message continued. “Free Palestine.” The message was greeted readily by a cheering audience. Most estimates (including those from health officials in the area) place the Palestinian death toll at more than 60,000. That number does not distinguish between civilians and Hamas militants. An estimated 18,500 of those killed were children.

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