Who Is Nicki Minaj's Husband? All About Kenneth Petty

Nicki Minaj met her current husband Kenneth “Zoo” Petty when she was just a teenager.

The couple first met when they were students at the same high school. The two lost touch for years before reuniting in 2018, leading to a whirlwind romance. Minaj and Petty got married in 2019 and had a son in 2020.

“He understands her as a person,” Minaj’s friend and musician Derrick Milano told PEOPLE in October 2019. “I think that’s really their connection — it’s that he really knows her. It’s a different kind of connection. He’s not famous, he he doesn’t want to be on Instagram, that’s not his modus operandi. He’s really focused on her.”

Despite their low-key relationship, Petty’s legal troubles have made headlines in recent years. He is a registered second-degree sex offender in New York and has spent several years in prison for both attempted first-degree rape and first-degree manslaughter.

So who is Nicki Minaj’s husband? Here’s everything you need to know about Kenneth Petty and his relationship with the rapper.

He and Minaj met in high school

Nicki Minaj’s Instagram

Minaj and Petty attended New York’s LaGuardia High School together while living in Queens as teenagers. They dated briefly at the time, but lost touch over the years before reconnecting in 2018.

Minaj has spoken about her early days with Petty on several occasions. She mentioned the romance in Chance the Rapper’s 2019 hit “Zanies and Fools”. “I met my husband when I was 17 in Queens / If you love it, let it go, now I know what it means / While he was up north for the body / I embodied everything and became known for my body,” the rapper said on the track.

In January 2019, she shared details about their teenage relationship on Twitter. “We’ve been like this to each other since we were very young children in the area,” she wrote. “He was on my body before the big booty from the ghetto. Before fame and fortune. He fought with my boyfriend because I wouldn’t be his girlfriend. He was always rude. But anyway, timing is everything.”

He and Minaj have been back together since 2018

Nicki Minaj’s Instagram

The duo reunited in 2018 and went public with their romance that December when Minaj shared a slideshow of the couple on Instagram. “He wants me to be his wife – his MISSIS like SIPPI NOW,” she wrote alongside photos of them laughing, smiling and cuddling.

Not long after, Petty debuted a massive neck tattoo of Minaj’s birth name, Onika. “Did you hurt Zaddy? His first tattoo – frontin didn’t seem to sting #Onika #HeavyOnIt,” she captioned the post revealing his new ink.

He is a registered sex offender

Petty was convicted of attempted first-degree rape in April 1995 for assaulting a then 16-year-old girl the previous year. He was sentenced to 18 to 54 months in prison and is on New York State’s Tier 2 registered sex offender list. He served four years behind bars for the assault.

When Minaj’s followers started pointing out Petty’s past on her early social media posts with him, she muted the comments and defended her man. “He was 15, she was 16… they were in a relationship. But the Internet is going crazy,” she wrote. “You can’t control my life. You can’t control your life. Thanks boo.”

Petty was arrested again in March 2020 for failing to register as a sex offender when he moved in with Minaj in California. He originally pleaded not guilty and posted $100,000 bail, according to records accessed by PEOPLE, but pleaded guilty in September 2021 during a virtual hearing and faced up to 10 years in prison.

In July 2022, Petty was sentenced to one year of house arrest and three years of probation, according to the U.S. Attorney’s Office, plus a $55,000 fine.

He pleaded guilty to manslaughter in the first degree

Petty pleaded guilty to first-degree manslaughter in the 2002 killing of a man named Lamont Robinson. He was originally charged with second-degree murder during a 2006 trial, but the charge was reduced in a plea deal.

“The defendant, Kenneth Petty, shot the deceased, Lamont Robinson, with a loaded handgun multiple times, causing his death,” according to the complaint obtained by The Blast.

Petty was sentenced to 10 years in prison but was released after serving seven in 2013 and was on supervised release for five years, records obtained by PEOPLE show.

Minaj has repeatedly defended their relationship

Kenneth Petty and Nicki Minaj. Johnny Nunez/Getty Images

In July 2019, Minaj spoke out against critics of her relationship in an episode about her Queen Radio podcast. “When a person s— who loved her before she had a dime in her pocket? How can you not understand that? How can you not understand luck versus power?” she said, according to Hey! News.

“How dare you talk about lowering standards? It’s true, money can’t buy me happiness and good sex,” she finished.

Talk show host Wendy Williams found herself in Minaj’s crosshairs when she brought up Petty’s previous run-ins with the law in November 2019. “He’s now served seven years in prison and he’s also a sex offender,” Williams said on her show. “So that means he’s—is manslaughter a murderer? Okay, he’s a murderer and a sex offender. Well, Nicki, congratulations.”

“Every time you bring him up, you feel the need to bring up those things,” Minaj shot back Queen Radio. She continued, “I didn’t know that in our society you had to be tormented by your past. I didn’t know that people couldn’t turn over a new leaf. I didn’t know that your depravity and wickedness was this deep-rooted, this deep-rooted.”

In January 2024, Minaj and Petty made headlines again after fellow rapper Megan Thee Stallion allegedly referenced Petty’s status as a level two sex offender in her song “Hiss”. (Minaj and Megan have reportedly had a falling out since collaborating on “Hot Girl Summer” in 2019.)

In the song, Megan raps, “These hoes ain’t mad at Megan, these hoes mad at Megan’s Law / I don’t really know what the problem is, but I guarantee you don’t want me to start,” referring to the law that requires sex offenders to register in the state. Fans claimed the reference to Megan’s Law was a direct reference to Petty, who is a Level 2 sex offender.

After “Hiss” dropped, Minaj appeared to retaliate by going on Instagram Live and replaying an unreleased clip of the song that appears to be about how Megan survived when Torey Lanez shot her in the foot in 2020. I call her Big Foot / Bitch fell / I said get up on your good leg,” Minaj raps, later saying, “She ain’t got three Grammys and can’t find a beat.” (Megan Thee Stallion has won three Grammy Awards.)

He and Minaj got married in October 2019

Minaj first sparked marriage rumors by calling Petty her “husband” in March 2019. “We got our marriage license,” she later confirmed on her Apple Beats 1 show in June of that year. “I think I have what I’ve been striving for, just happiness. It’s been so hard to get to a happy place. Now that I’m there, I don’t want to compromise that for anyone or anything.”

The rapper also added in August 2019 that she will get married in “approximately 80 days”. “We still had to pick it up and I was traveling, by the time I got back we had to rebuild it again,” she said. “You have 90 days from that time to get married. That was about a week ago, so now I have about 80 days.”

On October 21, 2019, Minaj confirmed with a post on Instagram that she is officially a married woman. “Onika Tanya Maraj-Petty 10*21*19,” she captioned the video of the “bride” and “groom,” also revealing that she hyphenated her last name.

Little is known about Minaj and Perry’s wedding, but a source told PEOPLE that Minaj “wanted to keep her wedding low-key.”

“She’s become a lot more private over the last year, but she’s very happy,” the insider added.

Eight months later, while talking to Lil Wayne on her show, Minaj opened up about her married life.

“I didn’t think it would be as refreshing and soothing as it is,” she said. “Even if you’re not married, when you have someone who feels like your soulmate or someone who understands you, you just feel like you’re on top of the world.”

In October 2024, Minaj and Petty celebrated their fifth wedding anniversary.

“Love at first sight. Thanks for getting me…every time,” the “Moment 4 Life” rapper wrote on Instagram in honor of the couple’s milestone.

He and Minaj have a son

Nicki Minaj’s Instagram

Minaj confirmed she is expecting her first child with Petty in July 2020. “#Proggers 💛,” she captioned a picture of herself stroking her baby bump. “Love. Marriage. Pram. Full of excitement and gratitude. Thank you all for the good wishes,” she added in another caption,

Their child, whose name has not yet been revealed, was born on September 30, 2020, PEOPLE confirmed at the time. Minaj revealed the gender of her little one two weeks later on October 20, showing off a congratulatory message from Beyoncé and other celebrities.

“Thank you Queen B, Kim & Ye, Riccardo Tisci, Winnie, Karol and everyone who sent well wishes during this time. It meant everything to me,” she wrote on Instagram. “I am so grateful and in love with my son. Madly in love,” she added. “My favorite liddo boy in the whole world.”

Minaj later shared details about the moment she and her husband realized her water had broken. “I was naked,” she wrote further Twitter. “I just got out of the shower and I asked him to rub my back. As soon as I started to slide up to him in bed, I just felt the water start to come out. I was strangely calm and I quietly said ‘omg, I’m about to give birth .’ He was very scared, and I laughed at him.”

He made cameos in Minaj’s music videos

Nicki Minaj’s Instagram

Petty broke into the music business by appearing in two music videos with his wife. The first was for her 2019 hit “MEGATRON,” and the second was “Hot Girl Summer,” Minaj’s 2019 collaboration with Megan Thee Stallion.

Minaj has also faced legal issues with her husband

Minaj became embroiled in Petty’s legal troubles when his alleged rape victim, Jennifer Hough, filed a harassment lawsuit against the rapper and her husband. The August 2021 lawsuit alleged that Minaj and Petty tried to use their money, power and fame to threaten her into dropping her rape allegations. She claimed Minaj called her personally to ask Hough to change her story and later offered her $20,000 to sign a prepared statement denying her allegations.

“As a direct result of Defendant Minaj and Defendant Petty’s actions, Plaintiff has been traumatized for life,” the lawsuit states. “The plaintiff has never felt safe since the defendant raped her.”

The lawsuit against Minaj was later dismissed in January 2022, according to documents obtained by PEOPLE, and Minaj plans to seek compensation for lost money in legal fees, according to her attorney Judd Bernstein.

“Your conduct in prosecuting this case against Nicki represents the worst of our legal system: lawyers who frivolously litigate cases against a celebrity assuming they’ll get paid if they spill enough dirt,” Bernstein wrote in an email to Hough’s. attorney obtained by PEOPLE. “This is just the beginning of Nicki’s and my efforts to make you pay for your disgraceful behavior with money and, if the Court recommends, disciplinary sanctions.”

For his part, Hough’s attorney, Tyrone Blackburn, assured PEOPLE that he is still pursuing a case against Minaj’s husband. “The case against Nicki was voluntarily dismissed,” he said. “The case against Kenneth Petty is still ongoing. Stay tuned!”

He violated his probation when he threatened rapper Offset

Broadimage/Shutterstock; Francis Specker/CBS via Getty Images

In September 2023, Petty threatened Cardi B’s husband, Offset, on social media. He was then sentenced to 120 days of house arrest, according to court documents.

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Source: HIS Education