As a little girl growing up in Southside Jamaica Queens, if anyone would've told me I'd have my own perfume one day, and be able to inspire young black girls everywhere, to go into Macy's or Nordstrom's and see their face staring back at them - I wouldn't believe them.

Female rappers get it the hardest. You have to be a girl, yet you have to be just as hard as the guys. I think some female rappers get scared out of the business before they can make it.

I've always had this female-empowerment thing in the back of my mind - because I wanted my mother to be stronger, and she couldn't be.

My rule is, whatever you were calling me four years ago is what you should be calling me now, because I don't like it when my family or close friends call me Nicki Minaj. To me I'm not Nicki Minaj when I'm with them.

The hardware manufacturers, game designers, cable companies and computer companies and, in fact, film studios are going to ensure that this thing marches on. They know that they are going to make an enormous amount of money from it.

My own life changed when my father returned from his second combat tour in Vietnam. When he came home after almost a year in Army hospitals, he weighed less than half of what he did when he left. I watched the agonizing recovery, and that experience was on my mind when I was asked to come to VA.

What we're doing here in America is we're making women choose between the family they love and the job that they need. No other nation on the planet is making these choices. In other countries, they've put politics aside and looked at the facts. When women succeed, the world succeeds. We're losing sight of that here in the USA.

Most original viewers of the Mickey Mouse Club didn't face the crush of family and social problems children have today.