Nicki Minaj's new June/July VIBE cover is here.  And if you can't tell: She's topless.  The white shirt is body paint and so is the blue "belt". The Barbie girl in the rap world is giving some interesting insight to her new found fame, female MCs before her, and her weird voices. Check out some experts when you read on...

“People don’t get when you’re off, or you’re having a bad day,” she says, obliquely referring to the photograph that bounced around the blogs of her hand- in-hand with Diddy, looking especially miserable. The speculation was inevitable: Had she been crying? Was she just tired? Are they doing it?

“When I grew up I saw females doing certain things, and I thought I had to do that exactly,” she says. “The female rappers of my day spoke about sex a lot . . . and I thought that to have the success they got, I would have to represent the same thing. When in fact I didn’t have to represent the same thing.”

“I’m not abandoning the funny voices. I just did a crazy tribute to ODB’s ‘Shimmy Shimmy Ya,’” she says, perfectly impersonating the late Wu-Clansman. “But it’s coming up more with the album. I had a teacher in elementary who would stand on her table and whisper. We’d all turn around like, ‘What is this lunatic doing?’ But she would achieve what she wanted. She wanted us to stop talking and listen. I feel like I need to mellow it down so people can hear what I have to say.”

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The issue hits stands June 15th.  You feelin' the ubercolorful cover?

And Ludacris is covering the upcoming issue of The Source.  All you Luda fans will be happy to know that his focus is longevity in this business of Hip-Hop:

"What contributes to my longevity is that I stay a fan of music, period" says the Atlanta native. "I get motivavted by beats more than anything else, even if i'm not a fan of a certain song, I might be a fan of a certain beat, and that might spark that interst and remind myself of why I'm here."

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Issue hits stands June 22nd.