Nicki Minaj is featured on the cover of the latest issue of Billboard magazine. Young Money’s Princess will be releasing her debut album, ‘Pink Friday’, on November 22nd.

On The cover, the magazine labels  Nicki Minaj “the First Lady Gaga of Hip Hop”, and claims that she borrowed a page out of Lady Gaga’s book when she named her fans “Barbz”. Nicki took to her twitter  to clear up some things will billboard.

I didn’t “borrow a page” out of anyone’s book. i’ve been calling my fans barbz way b4 i’ve ever heard any1 b called a “monster”

its funny how ppl jump to conclusions. maybe a lil black girl from queens couldn’t think 2 call her fans barbz on her own. go figure

that was in reference to the billboard mag cover story. (a story i absolutely love but i felt the need to clear that one little thing up)

i was underground for a very long time. ppl seem to think i popped up yesterday & started calling my barbz “barbz”. its unfair to assume

its ok 2 give everyone their individual props. no need to lump them all into 1. it undermines the work i’ve put in. the work my fans put in

On get kicked out of Young Money in 2009:
Minaj credits mentor Lil Wayne for sparking that fire in her. After she dropped out of the second leg of Wayne’s 2009 I Am Music tour, he kicked her out the crew — a turn of events that wasn’t made public. “I started to record by myself and I lost track of what I was doing and who I wanted to be,” she says. “It wasn’t until I linked back up with Wayne that he gave me this speech. He said, ‘What happened? You were hot,’ and it just hurt me so much. I wanted to prove to him that I was still hot. It hurt my ego so bad that I went back with a vengeance.”

On Jay-z noticing her mic skills:
Even Jay-Z took notice, making a suggestion for her verse. “I had never met Jay at that point,” Minaj says, “but he told Robin Thicke that if I did the song I should say, ‘I be, I be, I be, I be, I be on that money shit.’ So I took that line and just ran with it.”

For more visit billboard.com