Nicki Minaj is good with her words. Like, she’s the rapper who, in one of her first guest spots totally de-throned Rick Ross, Kanye West and Jay Z (Monster, come on…) before her first album even arrived.
That’s why her explanation of what went on with her and Miley Cyrus at the VMAs is just the most robust, succinct, clued-up way of describing what’s been at the heart of a lot of race issues and greivances between female musicians in the last couple of years.
Here’s the context again: Nicki Minaj wondered, on Twitter, why she didn’t get more nominations at the VMAs but Taylor, who fits the tall-white-blonde-skinny-girl-doing-kind-of-country-music bill that people disproportionately favour, did. Taylor got defensive saying Nicki was ‘pit[ting] women against each other.’ , Nicki said – you know what, this isn’t about you. And then later on, Miley was quoted as saying Nicki was ‘not polite’ and that the comments she’d initially made about the VMA and how black women’s bodies aren’t celebrated was: ‘just about [her]self’.
Then came the infamous moment Nicki, thanking all sorts for their support in getting her a VMA, looked over to the awards host and said ‘And now back to this b-tch that had a lot to say about me the other day in the press. Miley, what’s good?’’
When asked about this moment by The New York Times Magazine, Nicki replied: ‘The fact that you feel upset about me speaking on something that affects black women makes me feel like you have some big balls. ‘
‘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. If you want to enjoy our culture and our lifestyle, bond with us, dance with us, have fun with us, twerk with us, rap with us, then you should also want to know what affects us, what is bothering us, what we feel is unfair to us. You shouldn’t not want to know that.’
Nicki’s drawn a big loud line between pop culture and its effects on people’s day to day and we’re pretty excited to see how this changes people’s perceptions.
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Picture: Mark Davis
This article originally appeared on The Debrief.