Nicki Minaj likens US prison system to 'slavery' and praises Barack Obama for visiting inmats

'When I see how many people are in jail, I feel like, ‘Wait a minute. Our government is aware of these statistics and thinks it’s OK’ The sentences are inhumane.'

The rapper also spoke about the case of Sandra Bland (Craig Barritt/Getty Images)

Nicki Minaj has compared the US prison system with “slavery” due to overcrowding and “inhumane” sentences.

The rapper was speaking to Billboard when she criticised the countries’ drug enforcement policies and the ‘war on drugs’.

“What it has become is not a war on drugs. It has become slavery. Or something crazier. When I see how many people are in jail, I feel like, ‘Wait a minute. Our government is aware of these statistics and thinks it’s OK’ The sentences are inhumane.”

Minaj praised President Barack Obama, who made a historical visit to federal prison inmates in Oklahoma in July, saying she loves him for “trying to be a voice for people who no other person has ever tried to be a voice for”.

“I thought it was so important when he went to prisons and spoke to people who got 20 and 30 and 40 and 50 years for drugs.

“There are women who are raped, people who are killed and [offenders] don’t even serve 20 years. I was blown away watching the footage of him speaking to the prisoners. They never felt like anyone in the White House cared about them. I love that he made them people again.

“We all make mistakes. I think about how many men may have made a mistake to feed their families and then have to pay for it forever.”

Currently, America accounts for 25 per cent of the world’s prison population, since 1980 there has been a 500 per cent increase of federal and state prison inmates.

Minaj also touched on race matters during the interview and said the case of Sandra Bland “hit her hard”.

“This could have been me. I’m a sassy woman. I may have given a little bit of attitude to a police officer. I could have never come home.”

This year she called out MTV for not nominating her song Anaconda for video of the year, suggesting it was because she “wasn’t like other girls”. This then led to a highly publicised Twitter argument with Taylor Swift when the Trouble singer believed the comments to be aimed at her.

Then, in October, she suggested Miley Cyrus was appropriating black culture.

This followed their heated exchange at the VMAS where Minaj confronted her with the now infamous phrase ‘What’s good?’ after Cyrus gave her take on the feud with Taylor Swift: “If you want to make it about race, there’s a way to do that. But don’t just make it about yourself”.

Minaj later addressed Cyrus in an interview, saying: “You’re in videos with black men, and you’re bringing out black women on your stages, but you don’t want to know how black women feel about something that’s so important? Come on, you can’t want the good without the bad.”