Nicki Minaj is finally opening up about the near death experience she briefly mentioned at the BET Awards.

The rapper is on the cover of The Fader and she explained what she meant with her "really thought I was about to die" comment at the award show.

"I was making a point to say that the business kills so many people and we don't even realize it," she said. "I can only imagine how many people in this business have died because they may not have wanted to... to be embarrassed publicly. We care so much about what the world thinks that we don't live, really."

Minaj would not say what she thought was going to happen to her or why. At the award show, she explained that she refused to call an ambulance because it would end up on TMZ.

She also opened up about how she's changed since the beginning of her career, saying that before she was "just a little bit crazy." She would take things personally, but she's learned to think before she reacts.

But, as she proved at the BET Awards, she is still not afraid to voice her opinion. At one point during her speech, she told the audience that if you heard the words coming out of her mouth, then she had written it.

"My point of saying what I said was that women need to have a perspective," she said.  "If we're out here saying that we're so confident, and we're so this and so that, but we don't even trust ourselves to write down our own thoughts and spit it on a beat?"

She added that when she heard "The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill," she knew those words came from Lauryn Hill.

Minaj isn't so open, however, when it comes to her personal life. When asked questions about whether or not she was engaged, she sat quietly before finally changing the topic.