Nicki Minaj is seemingly suffering from her own success. She’s had countless billion dollar singles, features and albums. Her sharp tongue that caught the attention of Young Money leader Lil Wayne to catapult her career into the very bright spotlight is something she is eternally grateful for. But her sacrifices to ensure that she claimed the throne as hip hop’s reigning queen comes with emotions she chooses not to detail in the cover story for The Fader’s Fall Fashion issue.

When discussing her family, a usually bubbly Nicki scaled back her playfulness when detailing leaving them behind to kick off her career. “One day he asked my mother, ‘Do you ever think there’ll come a time we all live in the same house again, and Onika will be back and she’ll have her room, and I’ll have my room?’” Nicki says. “And it just broke my heart. I don’t want to get emotional. I just miss them. Every time I talk about them, I get emotional.”

Aside from her personal sacrifices, the Queens native has also faced moments in her career where she was forced to re-validate her hip hop cred. In her successful crossover into pop, there were moments were fans and hip hop fundamentalists wished she’d return to “mixtape Nicki.”

“My pop music made me have to retell my story, my credibility as an MC. I never thought I would have to explain that,” she said.

Get the full cover story at The Fader.