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​Nicki Minaj on the hardest thing she's ever gone through

Nicki Minaj gets candid in a new interview with Rolling Stone, opening up about music and her personal life.

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Nicki Minaj on Rolling Stone cover, 2015. Rolling Stone

At one point she talks about her choosing to have an abortion while attending the New York performing-arts high school LaGuardia.

"I thought I was going to die," she tells the magazine. "I was a teenager. It was the hardest thing I'd ever gone through."

She says the decision to have an abortion has "haunted me all my life."

"It'd be contradictory if I said I wasn't pro-choice. I wasn't ready. I didn't have anything to offer a child," she adds.

Minaj, 32, alludes to a pregnancy that ended in abortion on the track "All Things Go" off her new album, "The Pinkprint."

Minaj also discusses her image and what she wants to say with her music: "I stand for girls wanting to be sexy and dance, but also having a strong sense of themselves. If you got a big ol' butt? Shake it! Who cares? That doesn't mean you shouldn't be graduating from college."

The new Rolling Stone issue hits newsstands on Friday.

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