Barbie's In Charge
*Originally submitted April 12th, 2019 for the Cultures of Hip-Hop course at the University of Virginia
Leading up to the release of her first full-length album, Pink Friday (2010), MTV filmed and released a short documentary about Nicki Minaj, entitled My Time Now. Appearing in a pink wig, a young Nicki shares her frustrations about gender inequality; “Donald Trump gets to have 50 different wives and just hang out and be cool…But when you’re a girl you have to be like, everything. You have to be dope at what you do but you have to be super sweet, and you have to be sexy, and you have to be this, and you have to be that, and you have to be nice, it’s like, I can’t be all those things at once. I’m a human being. I don’t mean to be ranting and raving like this. Don’t use this footage, please, it’s just going to make me look stupid.” In 2019’s current political and social climate, Nicki’s quote looks anything but stupid. Throughout her career, Nicki Minaj has used her music and her visuals to subvert ideas of sexuality, femininity and gender; this can especially be seen through a progression of her videos from “Super Bass” in 2010, “Anaconda” in 2014, and most recently “Good Form” in 2018.
One of her biggest hits from her debut album Pink Friday, “Super Bass” lyrically and visually encapsulates the overly-feminine “Barbie” Nicki Minaj aesthetic of her early career. “Super Bass”, although technically by a rap/hip-hop artist, most definitely reads more like a pop or dance song in the production and overall synth, upbeat sound. Lyrically, Nicki raps about a relationship with a man that follows a lot of rom-com tropes of sensitive guys but also reminds listeners who she is, “Excuse me, you’re a hell of a guy/You know I really got a thing for American guys/I mean, sigh sickenin’ eyes/I can tell that you’re in touch with your feminine side/Yes I did, yes I did/Somebody please tell him who the eff I is/I am Nicki Minaj, I mack them dudes up/Back coupes up and chuck the deuce up.” Even though Nicki is rapping about boys who are “in touch with their feminine side” who make her heart beat like a “super bass”, she is still at the top of her game. As one Pitchfork reviewer writes, “’Super Bass’ isn’t shy about its pop side, but from a rap standpoint, Nicki’s in pristine form too, flexing and goofing in a confident double-time.” The video takes this idea of femininity with an edge and runs with it, presenting Nicki the Barbie in her full form. The “Super Bass” video features Nicki with half yellow half bright pink hair, bright pink lipstick, emphasized eyelashes, and a pink spandex giraffe print body suit; “Even by Nicki Minaj’s standards, the video for ‘Super Bass’ is exceptionally colorful. It’s all pink everything.” Everything about this video is overtly and stereotypically feminine, from the hordes of pink, to the the exposed push-up bras and cutoff jean shorts, to Nicki’s fast-blinking lashes and giant, beaming smile, and these visuals accompany a song rapping about a swoon-worthy man in touch with his emotions. But pay closer attention and you will notice that while there are many scantily-clad men and women in the video, the women still hold all the power. They are giving performative lap-dances to the men who sit captive (but willing) to the women. When Nicki struts by a group of shirtless men at the pink pool, they can look at her in her bathing suit and high heels, but they can’t touch. So while Nicki and her backup dancers may be body-rolling and twerking throughout the whole video, it is done entirely with a “Somebody please tell him who the eff I is” attitude.
Nicki as Barbie appeared innocent enough on “Super Bass” with her playful commentary on gender and sexuality in her music and videos, but she completely throws away the Barbie alter-ego in “Anaconda”, producing an incredibly interesting piece centered on the spectacle of the brown female body. In 2014, the same year “Anaconda” was released, Time magazine published a piece comparing Kim Kardashian to Saartjie Baartman, the “Hottentot Venus”. The Time article wrote, “There’s something to be said about confronting the respectability politics that deny women the agency to choose how and when they will display their bodies and the social policing that says modesty is best…Unlike Baartman, Kardashian West has been able to capitalize on the public’s fascination with their body and likeness both financially and socially.” Nicki Minaj continues this trend in her own way on “Anaconda”, starting with the sample of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s 1992 hit “Baby Got Back”, arguably the most well-known song about objectifying women based exclusively on their behinds. The lyric “My anaconda don’t, my anaconda don’t/My anaconda don’t want none unless you got buns hun” serves as the pre-chorus throughout the song. In the verses, Nicki takes the position of mentioning all the men who she allows to be with her, “I let him hit is ‘cause he slang cocaine/He toss my salad like his name Romaine/And when we done, I make him buy me Balmain.” While not very musically interesting, Nicki is still asserting that she has the power in this relationship and is only sleeping with this man in exchange for drugs and designer clothing. The song was pretty poorly reviewed, with writers asserting that it “seems to have been produced entirely for the sake of the video.” And maybe it was. The video opens on Nicki and other women of color in barely-there spandex outfits in a jungle, alluding to the “savage” and “uncultured” stereotypes going back to the Hottentot Venus. This video is, above all else, an ode to twerking. These women are twerking in the jungle, in the gym, in front of a white backdrop, and Nicki is even twerking in the kitchen. In the kitchen she can also be seen spraying whipped cream on her chest and cutting up a banana, a metaphor that reads pretty clearly. So while these women all have their bodies on display, there are no men watching them in the background, and certainly no men touching them. At the very end, Drake appears in a dimly-lit empty room on a chair as Nicki slowly crawls towards him, and then proceeds to twerk all over him while laughing in his face. At the very end, Drake tries to touch, and she slaps his hand away before flipping her hair and exiting the scene. In all cases, Nicki is still initiating any sex and taking complete control of the narrative and how her body is being displayed. She won’t even let Drake touch her, a man who is controversial in hip-hop for either being too emotional and sensitive, or for having the “particular ability…to repeat things women have said to him with zero awareness of what they mean.” So while musically “Anaconda” may not be a fan favorite or be Nicki’s best work, she uses visuals to take control of and mock the narrative of putting brown bodies on display.
Nicki Minaj’s latest album, Queen, released in summer 2018, brings about a new Nicki who seems to very much be a patchwork of her past iterations, especially in “Good Form”. A Pitchfork review of Queen writes, “To reign over the charts, the critics, and the streets, a hip-hop star with pop ambitions must be everything to everyone while holding on tight to their identity. This balancing act is especially unforgiving for women, and Nicki Minaj has contended with these double standards and sky-high expectations for over a decade.” It is undeniable that “Good Form” is incredible, both lyrically and visually. The song is much less dance or pop driven like “Super Bass” and “Anaconda” and is closer to her original mixtapes deeply rooted in rap and hip-hop. As is customary in Nicki’s music, she reminds not only her listeners, but also her peers (read: male rap artists) who is boss: “’Cause I be the baddie, B, Barbie tings, banging body B/Everybody be on my D, yo, I gotta be in reality/Suck a D if you doubted me.” In the pre-chorus she boasts, “See a bitch get more press than a key pad/Before you suck me off, get a knee pad/See, I pull the strings like a tea bag/I’m prolly with the jeweler playin’ freeze tag.” Nicki is repeatedly asserting her dominance both sexually and in regards to her status as an icon, and this trend continues in the visuals. This video, which one Rolling Stone writer describes as an “Oscar contender of a music video”, already looks different just in the first few seconds. The dark, architectural setting and artistic, sophisticated title card immediately set it apart from the bubblegum pink hair and lips of “Super Bass” and the exaggerated jungle twerking of “Anaconda”. “Good Form” takes itself seriously; it looks like a modern rap video, from the white Benz and Nicki’s white fur coat and diamonds, to the red velvet room and her dominatrix-style red lingerie. There are still twerking girls, but the outfits have become more sophisticated somehow, and the girls are in a darkly lit room either twerking to well thought out choreography, or on some sort of giant metal jungle gym. Nicki still has long, pink Barbie hair at times when she is thrashing gracefully around what appears to be a giant bowl of milk, with a large frosted cookie hanging above her. This scene is reminiscent of the “Super Bass” era Nicki, but is offset by the black and red latex of other sequences, and eventually, Lil Wayne’s verse and appearance. Even here, Wayne, Nicki’s mentor, does not seem to be the center of attention as the viewer’s eye is pulled to Nicki and other girls like Lauren London twerking behind him. And once again, Lil Wayne can look, but he certainly cannot touch.
In her 2010 MTV documentary, Nicki, in her pink wig, recounted how assertive her mentor Lil Wayne was on his sets, and how he commanded the room and everyone followed his orders without question. She continued, “Every time I put my foot down and stand up for myself it’s like, ‘We’ve heard about Nicki Minaj…No one wants to work with Nicki Minaj.” Following Nicki through the evolution of her videos from “Super Bass” to “Anaconda” to “Good Form”, it is clear that Nicki has learned to command a room. It has always been known that Nicki could keep up with her male peers, and even surpass them in ability. But the media and haters alike have consistently trashed her for being too sexual, undoing the progress women have made, and letting herself be treated as an object on display. But that’s the whole point, isn’t it? Nicki knows she’s good. So when she purposefully releases a song and video like “Anaconda”, is it not clear that this is supposed to be a commentary? Treat women better. Look at their bodies only with their permission, and most definitely do not touch. Let women control who sees their body and how. Celebrate the female body. Don’t be so offended by it. Don’t be like the writer who said The Pinkprint: Roman’s Revenge was fantastic, “at least when [Nicki] wasn’t busy shaking her add on dumb-hot singles like ‘Anaconda’”. While these three music videos clearly progress in the sense that they appear to become more sophisticated over time, the same general theme survives: Nicki, leading a group of other women of color in owning their bodies, and never letting a man make the first move. After all, when she was asked in 2010 if she was just “playing the role of a rapper right now”, she responded, “Maybe. Maybe I was just auditioning to see if I could kick everybody’s ass, and then I’ll gracefully bow out and say, ‘Okay I’m done. Next role, next script.’”
Works Cited
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