“Being able to look at old photos again made me realize, ‘These old photos are beautiful,'” said the rapper.

Nicki Minaj has some regrets about some of her plastic surgery decisions.

The 40-year-old rapper confessed her regrets on Thursday’s episode of The Run-Through with Vogue podcast.

“I guarantee you, if you change anything on your body and do anything surgical and all this, you’re going to — more than likely, not definitely, more than likely — look back one day and say, ‘I was fine just the way I was,’ ” Minaj told podcast hosts Chioma Nnadi and Chloe Malle.

“And that’s what happened to me,” she said. “I could not believe even some of the photos that I didn’t love.”

During the interview celebrating Minaj’s cover story for Vogue’s November issue, the co-hosts reminded the singer about the moment she joined Vogue Editor in Chief Anna Wintour at the Carolina Herrera Show in September 2011.

Minaj immediately told the co-hosts that she prefers not to look at older photos of herself “’cause I didn’t like the way I looked.”

“I didn’t like being skinny, having a flat butt, you know. Having boobs that didn’t sit high enough. It was a lot of things,” she continued. “And when I look back at myself now, I literally was like, ‘Oh, I’m about to look like that girl again.’ ”

“The reason why I wasn’t able to look back at my old photos was I didn’t like the way I looked, right, physically,” Minaj added. “And now I love the way that person looks physically.”

The “Starships” rapper explained how her decision to make changes became reliant on her growing public persona. Her passion for music has led her into a “very scary” environment that resembles a “fish bowl,” with “millions” of people watching her, she said.
Minaj added that welcoming her 3-year-old son, known publicly as “Papa Bear,” changed her perception of herself.

“I think pregnancy could’ve played a role because seeing my son did remind me of myself so much. My real self. And it made me think why didn’t I like this? So weird,” Minaj said. “But seeing old photos, being able to look at old photos again made me realize, ‘These old photos are beautiful.’”

While Minaj didn’t go into specifics about what she had enhanced with Vogue, she did touch on the topic during an appearance on The Joe Budden Podcast in March 2022. While reflecting on the early days of her career, the rapper said she “never had surgery. I had ass shots.”