Nicki Minaj has opened up about the backstory behind one of the most emotionally affecting moments in her entire catalog.
Nicki sat down with Ebro Darden for an interview just days after the release of Pink Friday 2.
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The conversation, which was released on Thursday (January 4), opened with a discussion of album opener “Are You Gone Already,” a song that deals with the birth of her son in late 2020 and the death of her father just months later.
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Nicki began by clearing up some confusion. Ebro seemed to believe that the song began with the rapper talking to her son about her father, since it begins with the phrase, “You never got to meet Papa.” Minaj explained that this was her talking to her father, as her son’s nickname is “Papa Bear.”
She said that she wrote the song right after her father, Robert Maraj, died from a hit-and-run. The track, Minaj said, was inspired by a series of eerie dreams that she had just days before the tragedy.
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The real-life phone call she received from her mother saying that her father had been in an accident, the rapper explained, gave her Déjà vu.
“[I]t’s the exact replica of a call I had in about four or five dreams,” she said. “[In the dream] the person was saying, ‘[Something happened to] your mom, we’re going to call you back and let you know how it went.’ But this call now is with my father. And I’m like, ‘Wait a minute. I dreamt this.’ … I didn’t remember how it ended.”
In addition, two nights prior to her father’s accident, Nicki said she had a different premonitory dream that was particularly graphic, prompting her to text people close to her saying: “Something bad is happening, and everybody needs to pray.”
“I saw all this blood coming out of someone’s head laying on the floor, but the person was conscious, they were scared, but it was just pouring out in the hair,” she recalled. “And then, two nights later, [the accident] happened.”
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The Young Money hitmaker said the song’s title came from her sense, even before she was told, that her father’s accident had been fatal. It was a feeling, she said, that she shared with a pastor she called upon hearing about the crash.
“Why I said, ‘Are you gone already?’ is because I knew he was gone already. Because while we were praying, the prayer changed to not like being ‘Help him.’ The way the pastor just started speaking him was like calling him back,” she said.
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The man convicted of the hit-and-run that killed Nicki Minaj’s father was ultimately sentenced to a year in prison in August 2022.
You can see the full discussion beginning at the 0:55 mark below.
