Nicki Minaj Talks About Her Tough Childhood and How She Coped with Bullies

Nicki Minaj knows what it's like to have a tough time growing up.

"Every time my parents fought, my mother would have us move and I would have to go to a new school, which meant I'd have to face the task of making new friends," she recalls in the new June/July issue of Teen Vogue. "I dreaded it. I had butterflies in my stomach each time: Are people going to like or hate me? Will they talk about me?"

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She had no choice but to find a way to survive. "I encountered jealous girls a lot—it wasn't like I had nice clothes, so they couldn't be envious of that, but they were like, 'You shouldn't be that confident,' " she reveals. "Sometimes, if I felt like there was a physical threat, I would call my older brother and say, 'Can you meet me after school because I don't know what might happen?' Sometimes there'd be a fight, sometimes not. I let people know I wasn't going to be pushed around. What it came down to is that the bullies wanted me to bow down to them. And I just wouldn't."

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The "Super Bass" singer also developed other techniques to cope with her haters and make the most of her situation: "I was a jokester. I let everything roll off my back," she says. "I always felt like I had other things going in my life outside of school, like church and extracurriculars—I was even on the softball team," she says.

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Nicki's American Idol co-judge Mariah Carey knows that's the truth!

How do you cope with bullies? Tell us your best tactics in the comments section or on Twitter @OKMagazine