Nicki Minaj Biography Onika Maraj was born in San Fernando, Trinidad and Tobago and lived there for five years with her grandmother. At age 5, she moved to the Queens borough of New York City. She is of mixed Afro-Trinidadian and Indo-Trinidadian descent. According to Minaj, she grew up in a home with an abusive father who drank alcohol, did drugs, and once tried to kill her mother by setting t... more.