Nicki Minaj has a baby on the way! The 37-year-old rapper and her husband Kenneth Petty are expecting their first child together. Nicki announced the exciting news on Monday, July 20, sharing a set of glam photos on Instagram that showed her baring her baby bump.
“#Preggers💛,” she captioned the first image. In the photo, the soon-to-be mother is sporting a curly, bright-yellow hairstyle while wearing a decorated bikini and sparkly platform stilettos. Kneeling on a pink couch, Nicki struck her pose by cradling her belly and smiling at the camera.
The “Good Form” artist shared an additional photo of her wearing a ruffled two-piece outfit with knee-high stockings and a blue updo hairstyle that was tied together with a bright green bow.
The Trinidad native looked like a goddess in another photo she posted of herself surrounded by leaves while wearing a white dress and a sparky veil. “And finally, the Virgin Mary by #DavidLaChapelle 🙏,” she wrote in her caption. Nicki’s pregnancy announcement came nine months after she and Kenny tied the knot in October 2019 and ten months after she announced that she was retiring from rapping to focus on having a family. The couple first dated when they were teenagers and reconnected in December 2018.
Nicki had released four studio albums, three compilation albums, three mixtapes, and over 100 singles prior to announcing her pregnancy. She recently collaborated with rapper 6ix9ine for their hit single “Trollz,” which debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 chart near the time of its release on June 12.
While her career has always been a priority in her life, she hinted in a 2014 interview with Complex that she wanted to have a baby before completing her fifth album. “[My biggest fear] is that I’ll become so consumed with work that I’ll forget to live my personal life to the fullest,” she said.
“If I’m done with my fifth album and I don’t have a child by then, no matter how much money I have, I would be disappointed as a woman, because I feel like I was put here to be a mother. … I definitely will be married before I have my baby. I want to make sure I do it in that order. I’ve always felt like that since I was young; my mother always put that in my head.”
