Grammy-winning rap and pop artist Nicki Minaj has spoken candidly about her Christian faith, spiritual battles, and “illuminati” in the music industry with online evangelist Bryce Crawford.
Over the last year, Minaj has spoken more publicly about having a Christian faith, urging President Donald Trump to highlight the plight of Christians in Nigeria.
Notably, he has aligned herself with conservative political figures, including Erika Kirk.
Minaj told Crawford that her grandmother was instrumental in shaping her early faith, growing up in Southside, Jamaica, Queens.
“It was normal for adults to get into fights where police were called,” she explained. “It made me have lots of thoughts that I would sit with… but I was imaginative, I was interested in everything and always a big dreamer.”
In the midst of the chaos, Minaj's grandmother instructed her and her cousins to pray in a quiet room. “If my grandmother was telling us to do this thing, I thought ‘It must work,’” she said.
During the interview, Minaj was asked if she believes the Illuminati - a conspiracy about a shadowy group secretly 'in control' - is real. While she didn’t confirm the existence of such a group, she said, “I feel that there definitely is a group of people that have made things very difficult for me, but I don't know if they're Illuminati. I don't know what they are.” She added, “I never looked at it as if it were like an entire secret society against me. But who knows, you know? It could be. Now, what they call themselves and what they proclaim to be? Only they could tell you that. But has it been a spiritual warfare? Absolutely.”
“I started realising people are really vindictive in this industry,” she said. “If you don't get money with one person or a specific people, they don't want you to get money at all. And that's when I started realising like, ‘Oh my gosh. What did I sign up for?’ because I didn't know that these people would be so territorial over people that they don't even know [and] that they don't have any claims to.”
She described her experience in the music world as “constant spiritual warfare,” adding: “I wish I would have known sooner that this music industry was such a spiritual experience because I felt like I bought a knife to a gunfight without having that information. I feel like I was ill-equipped for what was ahead, and no one had given me a heads up, and I had to figure it out when I got there.”
“What a relationship with God does is it changes the worldly system," she said. "The world tells people they should care about the world’s validation about who they are. But when you care about God, you only care about if the Lord is pleased with you. I know that if the Lord has told me to do something, He will equip me. So I don’t care about what other people say.”
“He’ll see me through,” she added.
“That’s what I can struggle with.," Crawford said. "Wow… that’s fire!”