Minaj bonds with St Jude’s girls, donates US$25,000 to home

For just about 30 min­utes yes­ter­day, Trinidad born rap­per Nic­ki Mi­naj spent time bond­ing with stu­dents of the St Jude’s Home for Girls in Bel­mont.
Mi­naj, seat­ed next to Com­mis­sion­er of Po­lice Gary Grif­fith, spent the time dis­cussing sev­er­al top­ics as the stu­dents asked her nu­mer­ous ques­tions about her ini­tial mo­ti­va­tion to be­come a record­ing artiste to the re­la­tion­ship that be­came her even­tu­al mar­riage to Ken­neth Pet­ty last year.
“I met Mr Pet­ty when I was 17 years old, first of all,” said Mi­naj in a full Tri­ni ac­cent.
“When I met him as a teenag­er, I was like oh God, typ­i­cal bad boy, I’m not gonna be able to lock him down, get out of here. And then he turned out to be... all of that (good)stuff. He’s just that on the out­side,” she said.
She added, “And he be­came ex­act­ly what I need­ed for the bal­ance in my life.”
Mi­naj al­so spoke on the ef­fect of drugs, ro­man­tic re­la­tion­ships as a teenage and even her teenage preg­nan­cy and sub­se­quent abor­tion as she tried to use her life as a les­son for the girls at the home.
“Even in my teenage years, I didn’t know which way I was gonna turn. I had a lot of things go­ing on, I’ve ex­pe­ri­enced be­ing in a home with do­mes­tic vi­o­lence. I’ve ex­pe­ri­enced you know, be­ing at a very dif­fi­cult cross­road in my life as a teenag­er and some­times as a teenag­er when things hap­pen you feel like there’s no up from there some­times,”
said Mi­naj.
“I don’t know what is go­ing on in your life but it feels so dif­fi­cult when you’re go­ing through it, but you will get through it. You will get out of it. I was one of those girls who ex­pe­ri­enced be­ing preg­nant as a teenag­er and you know I was so ashamed to tell my moth­er that. Till this day I nev­er told my moth­er. I felt like I let my­self down, and I felt like if any­one were to find out my whole fam­i­ly would be ashamed of me,” she said.
She added, “I want you guys to use, if you want to use my life as a les­son in the fact that there are al­ways bet­ter days ahead. I want you guys to be en­cour­aged.”
“There has to be some­thing in­side of you, even right now to­day that de­cides, you’re gonna win no mat­ter what. No mat­ter what comes at you,” Mi­naj told the girls.
Mi­naj al­so host­ed an im­promp­tu tal­ent show in which some girls sang Be­y­once’s Ha­lo as well as Mi­naj’s 2014 hit Pills and Po­tions.
She was how­ev­er im­pressed with a spo­ken word piece by one of the girls and ex­pressed some re­gret that she had not record­ed the per­for­mance to so­cial me­dia.
They then con­vinced Mi­naj, with the aid of a smart­phone do a verse from her hit song Mega­tron and a cou­ple lines from her verse on Mo­tor­sport.
Mi­naj al­so asked the stu­dents what they felt they need­ed in the com­mu­ni­ty, as she said she hoped to cre­ate a space for the youths in the area.
Be­fore leav­ing, Mi­naj do­nat­ed $US25,000 to home. Source: Trinidad Guardian, Feb 2020

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