Nicki Minaj’s father killed by hit-and-run driver

Robert Maraj, the father of Trinidadian-American rapper, singer, songwriter, actress, and model, Nicki Minaj has been killed in a hit-and-run accident over the weekend.

Robert Maraj, 64, was hit by a car that kept going in Mineola, Long Island at 6:15 p.m. ET on Friday night, according to a spokesperson for the Nassau County Police Department. He was taken to a hospital where he was pronounced dead on Saturday.

“The investigation is ongoing,” police added.

Nicki, 38, who was born in Trinidad and Tobago and raised in the Queens borough of New York City, is yet to publicly address the death of her father.

In 2010, the rapper described her father as violent towards her mother, telling Rolling Stone that he once set fire to their home with her mother inside.

“I remember when my mother would let my father be violent with her and she always brings up this story about when I was a little girl and I would stand in front of my mother,” the singer said, demonstrating how she put her arms out for protection, in her 2018 documentary Queen.

“That’s why maybe some people would describe me as abrasive or bitchy or whatever because I vowed from that age no man would ever abuse me, call me out my name, treat me like that. Then all of a sudden, that was my life.”

Nicki Minaj’s mother, Carol Maraj, is also a gospel singer with Afro-Trinidadian ancestry. Carol worked in payroll and accounting departments during Minaj’s youth. Her father was addicted to alcohol and other drugs, and had a violent temper, burning down their house in December 1987.