Rapper Nicki Minaj has opened up about her new natural look and confessed that she had grown tired of the colourful wigs and crazy costumes, and was fed up of trying to think of different ways to reinvent herself.

Speaking to E! about her new simple style, the hitmaker explained that she always new that eventually the characters she invented for herself would have to stop:

"It was [a] conscious [decision] at the beginning of my career. I felt like I would do this crazy stuff and then I would come back. Before my first album I used to have a natural look, only my underground followers really knew that side of me. And then I think mainstream only knew the wigs but I wasn't always looking like that when I started doing underground raps.”

The 'Starships' songstress went on to add that she feels like now is the right time to strip away the visual distractions and get back to her natural self:

“So I always thought it would come full circle eventually and I thought, 'well, what else can I do by the time my third album comes out?' I'm just going to have to go back to the basics because what other colour wig am I going to put on my head? I was running low on ideas and people just reacted really well to the natural look."

Watch Minaj discuss her new album here: