Actually, this is all about me in reference to Nicki Minaj.
I have had a soft spot for Nicki Minaj ever since I stumbled across
the video for "Massive Attack." At the time, Lady Gaga was making serious pop culture waves that left me unmoved. Then comes this candy-colored video full of snakes and spiders and male and female soldiers and men used the way women are usually used in mainstream hip-hip videos, i.e. they get to sing the hook and otherwise are relegated to eye candy. Also there's a big American convertible with two women in the front seat. It was over-the-top, sure, but it was also just silly. It felt so much less calculated than its contemporaries (M.I.A. included, she said in passing) -- deliberate, yes, calculated, no, if that makes sense. So much more exuberantly fun, as in "I know exactly what this means and I don't care, pink machine guns for everybody!" Also, unlike Gaga (but like M.I.A.), the music was catchy and inhabited my head for days after watching it.
I have made this mistake with previous musical acts that I like; I expected her to remain marginal and quirky because surely she was just too weird for the mainstream to handle. This is a flaw in my vision that someday I am going to shed.
The first hint that I was wrong came when there was some weird drama stirred up between Minaj and Lil Kim. Why anyone thought they were at all alike, I never did quite suss out, but that was the basis of the beef -- Lil Kim apparently thought Minaj was ripping her off.
It still seemed to me that I was the only one whose thoughts went to Lady Gaga when I first encountered Minaj. I quietly chalked this up to unconscious racism. Of course everyone rushed to compare her to Lil Kim. Lil Kim is black. Lady Gaga isn't. End of story, I said to myself in my head.
The Lil Kim incident was, however, also the first hint that Minaj's image seemed to be in transition. She soon became sort of a life-sized fashion doll. A gay club sensation, understandably. It was fun. I enjoyed looking at pictures of her outfits. Still playful, still OTT, it was all good as long as she kept her music catchy too.
And then "Super Bass" came out and I cried inside. Everybody loved the song. It was a giant hit. It also sounded pallid to my ears. Just another club-friendly cut. And, OK, I didn't want to hear Minaj singing about love and feelings and shit. I wanted her baring her teeth and spitting twisty rhymes again while making the boys do all the heavy lifting. I wanted my fierce quirky candy back.
I saw her briefly at the Super Bowl and sighed. Lip gloss for Madonna's bid for respectable music legend status.
So when I started hearing rumblings about Minaj's Grammy performance, of course I had to go look it up. Offended Catholics? Possibly career-ending? Really?
Oh yeah.
That performance was everything that Madonna's halftime show should have been. Remember when Madonna offended everybody by kissing Black Jesus in "Like A Prayer"? Madonna herself occasionally seems to have forgotten, though.
Nicki Minaj hasn't.
You know what thrills me in pop music or, heck, just about any other art these days? Artistic ambition pushed to its limits. And that's what I saw when I watched Minaj's Grammy performance. It was messy and it was weird and it didn't entirely cohere -- and I so very much don't care. Because it had "I Feel Pretty," demon-style. It had confessional booths and choir boys and a diss on everyone who cannot spell "Svengali." And then she levitated at the end.
If we're going to have spectacle, make it more like this, please.
I'm excited to have the Nicki Minaj I love back. I hope she sticks around.
(Also, I am a fool to have missed it on live broadcast. My bad.)![[personal profile]](http://www.dreamwidth.org/img/silk/identity/user.png){kind=small}
