Nicki Minaj nods off four times during interview

Nicki Minaj allegedly fell asleep four times during an interview with GQ. Photo/AP

It appears promoting her new single Anaconda has exhausted rapper Nicki Minaj, who has fallen asleep while being interviewed in the US.

Minaj struggled to keep her eyes open for her interview with reporter Taffy Brodesser-Akner from GQ Magainze and dozed off four times.

The interview was conducted in Minaj's dressing room at the Barclays Center in New York.

Brodesser-Akner writes in her feature for GQ: "Her eyelashes are even and delicate, like wisps from a dandelion, and I can't recall if I've ever seen her without prosthetic versions. I have had plenty of time to search my memory, though, because here on this couch, in this room, during this interview, with me sitting next to her, Nicki Minaj has fallen asleep.

"To be completely accurate, she never fell into actual REM sleep during our interview, but at four separate times she dozed off, her head jerking awake at just the moment it had started to dip.

"In between, she was what I could call low-key and reserved, because I am generous, but the picture looked like this: those eyelids, falling, falling over eyes that would cross momentarily, closing for a moment but staying too long - a blink that lasted a few blinks longer than a blink."

Minaj has had a busy past couple of months promoting her raunchy new single Anaconda, which included a performance at the MTV Video Music Awards in August.

- WENN