Nicki Minaj is a good Christian girl. Although, as you may have noticed from her videos, the hip-hop pop diva and rapper is a little crazy, oozes a brazen sexuality, and has a tough and quite often dirty command of language that puts most male rappers to shame.
In the video for banging chart-topper Starships, Minaj shows she's comfortable in her own skin, fitting her voluptuous figure into an itsy bitsy pink bikini the explicit version of Beez in the Trap has rhymes that make you wilt; and, going back a few years, her demented duet with Eminem on Roman's Revenge off 2010 debut album Pink Friday is venomous verging on nasty.
She really is a fruity and fearsome piece of work.
However, the 29-year-old can turn quickly, and puts up an imposing offensive when something gets to her.
When it is put to her that some of her lyrics and outfits would surely be enough to make Jesus blush, Minaj bites back.
"Yeah, I'm sure they would," she says seriously. "Everybody is a sinner. Aren't you a sinner? Or are you a saint?"
Yeah, a bit of both, I guess, I say.
"I feel like pop stars are expected to be the new saints and nuns of the world when they [saints and nuns] are doing [stuff] in their lives that would make us blush. You know, cheating on their wives and doing all sorts of nonsense, but it's like a celebrity has this magnifying glass on them.
"But no, I think Jesus would blush about you, I think he'd blush about me, I think he'd blush about everybody, even my own mother. I don't think loving God means that I'm a perfect human being. I think he knows my flaws, and I think he's sat with sinners, and I think he healed the sick, and I think that he is an amazing God and he deserves to be praised and I will continue to praise him no matter if people have a problem or not."
OK then. I have been put in my place by Ms Minaj (real name Onika Maraj), and there is no denying she is making some of the most inventive and challenging hip-hop and pop music around - even if the nagging catchiness of Starships is craze-inducing.
She is prolific, too. Since 2007, she has released three popular mix tapes and two albums, including latest record Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, which came out in April, and had a string of high-profile collaborations with everyone from Justin Bieber and Eminem to Madonna and Mariah Carey.
It was rapper and record company owner Lil Wayne - a mega music star in the US who's famous for his customised gold and diamond teeth - who discovered Minaj and gave her her big break in the late 2000s when she signed to his Young Money Entertainment label.
"I was so nervous," she says of her first meeting with him.
"When I was about to see him, I almost couldn't walk. My brain wasn't sending a message to my legs. People thought I was joking but I couldn't move."
This was around the time Lil Wayne was at his peak, having just released his classic 2008 album Tha Carter III.
"He was taking over the game and he was such a big superstar to me. I knew that just meeting him could change my life," she remembers.
It did. She's sold more than three million albums worldwide and amassed more than 13 million Twitter followers and, adding another string to her bow this year, was the voice of Steffie the woolly mammoth in Ice Age: Continental Drift.
"And one of the best things about my relationship with Wayne is that he's still inspiring me and a lot of it has to do with his work ethic. He never rests. He never gives up. I really, really respect that about him."
Her family is also an important part of her life, though she is noticeably guarded about saying too much about them. It's not that she doesn't want to talk about them; she just likes to keep her family life separate from her career because they keep her "grounded".
"I try hard to keep my family out of what I do, because they are my outlet. I need that out, you know, because the business gets to be so much and you begin to live your life like it's one big show. But when I go home I'm just Onika and I really, really enjoy that."
Her family life hasn't always been so rosy. Born in Saint James, Trinidad and Tobago, on December 8, 1982, Minaj moved to New York when she was 5.
She grew up around domestic violence and her father had addiction issues. To cope, she made up alter egos she would live her life through, including an early version of "Nicki Minaj".
And that obsession with them continues to this day. On Pink Friday, the world met her "twin brother" (and sometimes a demon) Roman Zolanski, the narrator of a number of songs, and his mum Martha, with the British accent, both of whom show up again on Roman Reloaded.
While the two albums both merge pop, dance and hip-hop, they are different in that the debut is brutally honest and musically challenging, whereas Roman Reloaded leaves more to the imagination.
"Sometimes I felt the first album was a little too revealing, too emotional at times, and the other thing about your first album is that you've had all these emotions pent up inside to release - and that's what you do on your debut.
"But on the second album I was more concerned about just having fun."
She went back to Trinidad recently and although she has been home before, this time she was welcomed as a bona fide superstar.
"Going back to Trinidad was the most heart-warming experience. They rolled out the red carpet and they were so lovely and helpful, it was heart-warming." She says she felt proud and for the first time started to realise that "they were part of me and yes, Trinidad does influence my music".
Are her Trinidad roots where she gets that inherent sexiness that she has on screen and in photos?
"Oh, all the women down there are really sexy. And I know my mum, when I was growing up, she was always really, really sexy ... a very West Indian woman type of lady. So that is a part of me.
"And I definitely relate to the carnival situation because I love to play dress-up."
See it, hear it
Nicki Minaj's Pink Friday Reloaded Tour, Vector Arena, Friday, September 28.
Tickets available at ticketmaster.co.nz
