"I went so far to the other side that there's only one place to go from there," Minaj told MTV. "You can either continue doing costumes or you can just say, 'Hey, guess what? This will shock them even more. Doing absolutely nothing will shock them even more.'"

Minaj cites her Elle Magazine cover shoot as the beginning of her natural transformation. "I was gradually getting myself to this place where I was wearing my new hair out. I knew I was doing it, I wasn't going to announce it to the world but I knew I was going to do it."

She added: "I really just try to let things happen gradually. I wanted to go with the blonde and the brown roots to no wigs at all and I feel like we've successfully done it."