Nicki Minaj is the queen of pushing the envelope. Recently she released a video for her single, “Anaconda,” which received mixed reviews. I enjoyed the video and thought it was intentionally over the top. It makes sense she would want to top it with her next release. But the lyric video that just surfaced for “Only” went a bit too far.
In this video, Minaj is a cartoon, so she is not scantily clad or scandalous in a sexual way. Instead, the scandal arises with its blatant Nazi imagery and influence.
That is not okay.
The song speaks about how the men in the Young Money rap group (comprising Drake and Lil’ Wayne) only like women who are “boss” and “independent,” so I understand that the creators of the video would want symbolism from a powerful group in there—maybe even that’s a stretch—but Nazis? Really?
They could have chosen anything else, any other powerful group, even if the group’s motives were questionable. Any other group would be better than channeling the Nazis.
I don’t think anybody should be necessarily offended, though, as the video is just a feeble attempt to get people talking about the song, and as the popular phrase says, “any publicity is good publicity.”
(See: They won; I’m talking about it right now.)
Minaj and the director and visual artist, Jeff Osborne, seem to be playing a lovable game of “good cop, bad cop.”
When pressed about the issue, Nicki Minaj tweeted, “The artist who made the lyric video for “Only” was influenced by a cartoon on Cartoon Network called Metalocalypse & Sin City.” Supposedly, Osborne had said prior that the show had played a role. Then in a separate tweet eight minutes later she said, “I didn’t come up w/the concept, but I’m very sorry & take full responsibility if it has offended anyone. I’d never condone Nazism in my art.”
Meanwhile, Osborne made the following statement to MySpace: “Before I start, be clear that these are my personal views and not the views of Nicki Minaj, Drake, Lil Wayne, Chris Brown or Young Money.”
I would say that is a good start, but he continued.
“First, I’m not apologizing for my work, nor will I dodge the immediate question. The flags, armbands and a gas mask (and perhaps my use of symmetry?) are all representative of Nazism.”
Um, OK. Osborne went on to talk about how a majority of the symbols are American in the video, adding, “What’s also American is the First Amendment, which I’ve unexpectedly succeeded in showing how we willfully squeeze ourselves out of that right every day.”
He went on to say that it is important for us to remind the younger generations of horrible things that happened in the past so they don’t happen again. The video does nothing to wrong any rights because the song’s lyrics do not have anything to do with remembrance or prevention. In fact, each rap verse starts with each of them talking about how they would have had sex with Minaj if she didn’t have a man, but they would be first in line if that were to change.
I’m not really picking up any signs of education for our younger generations from that.
Osborne concluded his statement with an unapologetic, “So if my work is misinterpreted because it’s not a sappy tearjerker, sorry I’m not sorry. What else is trending?”
Minaj plays the good cop, even though I can almost guarantee she saw the video before it was released and had some sort of artistic input. By doing this, fans and viewers alike will not penalize her because she ostensibly did not have anything to do with the Nazi imagery, and she apologized. Osborne is the bad cop, stirring the pot so that people talk about it.
Really, it’s a genius plan, but they could have chosen a more tasteful way to fire up her fans.
Also, the excuse Osborne makes, claiming the video was inspired by a Cartoon Network show is lame. Upon further examination of the show, I see that the graphic aspect of the video is similar, but there are no references to the Nazi regime.
Besides, that show would probably be cancelled before we could even say Hitler, and understandably so, if it had portrayed Nazi propaganda. In cartoons or in music, Nazi influences infused into a pop-culture piece of art created to entertain would be ridiculous.
