Nicki Minaj - The Pink Print (2014)

feel like the missing puzzle piece is the vmas, of which "anaconda" was probably a highlight (likely because there wasn't really that much to compete with). plus apparently they've been playing in reruns all week so more publicity there

i understand that it's mostly pushback against <certain ppl> leaping over rhetorical cliffs to find something politcally radical in her titillation-as-empowerment, but i get bothered by the amount of flak nicki takes for not living up to someone else's feminst ideals. lots of weeknd verses out there much more deserving of the criticism.

the difference being that even ppl who like The Weeknd are willing to admit that dude is a lyrical sewer

great, great post dlh

lol djp otm

Someone should buy nicki a Feminist Male Tears mug

hahaha

i get bothered by the amount of flak nicki takes for not living up to someone else's feminst ideals. lots of weeknd verses out there much more deserving of the criticism.

o i agree, that's why the above is not an argument for the song sucking or a reason not to listen to it or anything. just if we are gonna talk about it in terms of feminist ideals that is my (spectator's) assessment.

xp lol.

Post 1 of 2, because post 1 is a genuine question (while post 2 is a more controversial ~PINIONS 4 U~ post I should probably know better than to make)

I'm finding this thread v weird at the moment, and I'm probably missing something.

But, it's like... there's a whole massive ILX thread about Billboard and the marginalisation of African-American music. It's been noted, repeatedly, that PoC, especially Women of Colour, have been excluded and all but erased from the upper echelons of the charts. And yet Minaj seems to manage the impossible, and chart a single at Number Two - and yet there is a whole segment of ILM which *seems* deeply invested in somehow explaining that it either didn't happen, or didn't count? Why? What am I missing, or am I reading this completely wrong?

Post 2 of 2, which has been building for a couple of days of eyerolling at some of the opinions ITT, and which I will definitely regret posting, but here we go.

Granted, Minaj is not my area of expertise; I haven't bought one of her albums since the first one. I watched the video to see what people were losing their shit over, and found it both enjoyable and interesting. But when I see the goon crew and the ILM rap bros and your Professor Feminisms of ILX lining up to say that something is a) shit and b) Not Feminist, and yet I see the young women I know, especially the feminist-identified ones who are interested in intersectional issues all going "Holy shit, what a complex cultural document that manages to be a parody of A Thing, but also the Thing Itself, and somehow an empowering Anti-Thing, all wrapped up in an appealing, sugar-bullet format which manages to get right up inside the belly of the machine in a way that pure sloganeering really doesn't" I tend to think that a point is being missed, and not by "Tumblr".

DLH raises some interesting points, but completely misses others. First, that consumers are not necessarily passive, that they are able to read polysemic or even ambivalent messages and reframe them. I think that female audiences are way, way more aware of the "sexuality is the only power you will ever be allowed" trap than you will ever know, both on an intellectual level and an experiential one. Granted, Minaj is about living and thriving within those already existent strictures with resistance, rather than demolishing them. But you're going to fault a person living under those strictures for taking a pragmatic, realist position, rather than an idealistic one? What a lovely, lofty position to be able to take!

Second is about, again, the ways in which female artists are scrutinised and problematised, and when you're talking about women of colour, this isn't doubled, it's increased exponentially. That someone like Kanye or Drake (or LOL as mentioned above the Weeknd, who I've somehow escaped hearing) can have ~problematic elements~ which somehow only contribute to their complexity, both as an artist and the complexity of their art. But the idea that someone like Minaj can occupy a space of both "wank-object" and "subversive" at the same time, or that she can e.g. try to preach a message of female empowerment while expressing feelings of ambivalence or even anger towards other women (inside a society that actively *encourages* all people to hate women), that's a complexity too far. Minaj doesn't get to be "complex", she gets reduced to a cartoon character.

I mean, y'know, Male Feminist Tears and that whole wail of "Oh, but it's so ~retrogressive~ that this idea of 'you can enjoy your own beauty, being sexual, enjoying dancing, celebrating your own ass, despite or even while under the scrutiny of the male gaze' is still considered raaaadical!" just shows how distant Male Feminists are from the actual lived experience of young women. It sucks that we live in a society where "man writes song celebrating enjoying women's big butts" is a time-honoured tradition that grannies dance to at weddings, but "woman writes song celebrating enjoying her own big butt" is OMG SOOOOOOOO PROBLEMATIC!!!!! but that is the society we live in, and so long as we still do, the latter message will continue to be radical. That a woman being sexual is *always* seen as "titillation" and never an expression of her own desires. (All of Nicki's lapdances are the weirdest and most interesting commentaries on the structures of sexual power - the awkward Drake one is funny, but compare it to her solipsistic self lapdance in Monster. She does not seem unaware of the complexity of this imagery. But many of the people complaining "how can a lapdance be a subversive act?!?!?" kinda... do? No, you cannot pole-dance your way to equality. But deconstructing (is Minaj deconstructing or replicating? Therein lies the argument.) sex work as a site of power structures... that's a lot more interesting.)

The women I see responding to this video so positively are looking at the big ball of contradictions and complexities and strictures and tiny gestures of rebellion (the banana!) while still conforming to an outward appearance which will be swallowed enough to make one successful. Maybe this is not meant to confuse or trouble or muddy the certainties of *FAPPERS*. Who is the implied audience? Why is it always men? Because I sure see a whole lot of *women* watching it, going "Holy shit, the whole confused and complex ball of living in a female body under the male gaze, this video fucking *gets* it." Messages can be polysemic, they can have multiple intended audiences.

WRT intended audiences and Nicki Minaj, I am *always* reminded of the reaction to the cover of her first record - seeing dude after dude going "IDGI, why is her body all distorted like that?" But people raised as female in western society looked at that image and instantly grokked "Barbie Proportions" and every single complex association that that signifier brings. I think this video, and the level of satire involved, is another of those moments.

Forks I am going to go full-on patronising here but you do realise that a) at no point in this thread has Lex claimed that 'Anaconda' is particularly feminist, b) the quotes you are getting all bothered about relate to a totally different song at the start of the thread and c) flipping from "oh my god look at her butt" to "stop looking at my butt" does not have to take place within the same song?

It sucks that we live in a society where "man writes song celebrating enjoying women's big butts" is a time-honoured tradition that grannies dance to at weddings, but "woman writes song celebrating enjoying her own big butt" is OMG SOOOOOOOO PROBLEMATIC!!!!!

This is OTM but at the same time in addition to Nicki there are six (!) men with writing credits on this song (even if one of them is Sir Mix-A-Lot). The song is garden variety filthy but people are handwringing over the video really.

ha i heard a lot of dudes (well, two) say "why'd she make herself look like a barbie it's gross" which is point-missing on an even more severe level i think!

That someone like Kanye or Drake (or LOL as mentioned above the Weeknd, who I've somehow escaped hearing) can have ~problematic elements~ which somehow only contribute to their complexity, both as an artist and the complexity of their art. But the idea that someone like Minaj can occupy a space of both "wank-object" and "subversive" at the same time, or that she can e.g. try to preach a message of female empowerment while expressing feelings of ambivalence or even anger towards other women (inside a society that actively *encourages* all people to hate women), that's a complexity too far.

the out i habitually offer kanye, probably overcharitably, is that when he's dumb and gross and offensive he is so in ways that seem rly specifically attuned to the way ~america~ is dumb+gross+offensive. this is really only true some of the time, tho; at other times i don't have a lot to say for him. anyway maybe nicki is this too, or something similar! you suggest this here--while expressing feelings of ambivalence or even anger towards other women (inside a society that actively *encourages* all people to hate women)--and i take it srsly but idk if i agree that I'm Hotter/Richer/Better Than U is a "feeling of ambivalence or even anger" more than a sort of automatic boast (the stuff about this kind of automatic boast being a long and venerable pre-nicki tradition is all two grafs later, sry for org problems); i might be readier to if it were less of an undeepening pattern over a career (with exceptions of course--"i'm the best" is, ironically, a pretty generous song) and if it hadn't gradually-not-immediately come to seem to me kinda shallow and dispiriting. ah but society is kinda shallow and dispiriting! well, ok. i'm not much impressed by myself when i get entrenched in that position w/r/t kanye.

But the idea that someone like Minaj can occupy a space of both "wank-object" and "subversive" at the same time

well of course she can. i mean w the kind of subversion we're talking about, it might even be necessary for her to be the former in order to be the latter. i just don't rly think she's doing it, here. i think she's done it in "i endorse these strippers" and in "fall like dominoes" (now there is a flipped sample!) and even maybe haha in "marilyn monroe" which prob does not get a lot of respect. if it is tasteless or arrogant or impossible for me to make these distinctions b/c i am a boy then idk, don't listen to me. i know that some women disagree with me but of course some do not; some are even interested in intersectional issues. it's a messy ol world.

i rly don't mean to deny her complexity or the kind of confusion that makes for (is required for) good art -- only to register some objections to ideological praise of a particular song which i thought itself kinda cartooned her, or was panglossian about her. also i certainly wouldn't call sir mixalot unproblematic. and to the extent that nicki's hypercompetitive narcissism is just the hypercompetitive narcissism of hiphop, vigorously practiced by males for decades -- i'm pickier and pickier about that strain of the genre these days, for many of the same reasons i posted about. a personal weariness. (and of course it isn't hiphop really: it's the hypercompetitive narcissism of something much larger. hiphop structurally embodying this characteristic of late_capitalism is absolutely one of the things that has made it the most important artform of the period -- like all dominant artforms both expression and critique. but some songs are more one than the other. just don't think nicki is v sharp or dangerous here. i know some people think she is. i know she can be. sometimes.) am v conscious of the tyrannical academic demand for female artists to be twice-as-good to earn their unaskedfor stripes as Standard-Bearers For Feminism but i don't think i was objecting to any praise of nicki i wouldn't also have objected to had it been praise of kanye. or taylor swift. or--(uh i just tried to think of a white male popstar i give a shit about and couldn't so i'll stop groping for a token). now if you comb the 33529058320 kanye threads you will admittedly not find a lot of long posts from me about how problematic he is but haha that's cuz the irl conversations i'm dragooned into abt him are frankly all the intellectual stimulation i need on that front.

last quick thing

Maybe this is not meant to confuse or trouble or muddy the certainties of *FAPPERS*. Who is the implied audience? Why is it always men?

this was one sentence, in response to lex's explaining to me that "playing up to the male gaze and rejecting the male gaze are not mutually exclusive". now maybe rejecting the male gaze does not require that the gazers actually feel any rejection. ok i can get w that! i suppose an unnoticed rejection would be the most complete rejection. on the subject of unmale audiences tho one wonders how skinny bitches feel. "not monolithically" i guess is the answer.

DLH, I think there's a lot of common ground in what we're saying. So we're probably going to concentrate on the bits where we diverge rather than going "OTM, OTM, OTM" to all the (many) bits we are in agreement on. With that said...

1) the skinny bitches that Nicki disses in the song; I very much read that as part of the deal she was doing on Instagram, of posting dozens of thin, white, blonde girls from the Sports Illustrated swimsuit issue, with their butts hanging out in the exact same pose she was doing on the cover of Anaconda, posting the single word: "ACCEPTABLE" underneath them, and then "UNACCEPTABLE" under her identical pose. That it's possible to dis the cult of "the acceptability of only thin, white models" as "skinny bitches" and problematise the *phenomenon* rather than the individual. (Rather like, when I see Women of Colour criticising "White Feminists" I'm able to step away from going "HEY! I'm white, and a feminist, and *I'm* not like that!" and actually agree that people like *redacted* and the things they practice are terrible, and rather than get butthurt, try harder not to be like that.) Maybe I'm giving her too much credit. But I'm still acknowledging that her *anger* at a racist beauty standard is still legitimate, even if she *is* targeting the individuals rather than the phenomenon. (Because our society *does* encourage us to hate the woman rather than hate the beauty-game.)

2) Her "I'M THE BEST" schtick. I agree with a lot of your discomfort with this. But this is a problem with *America* and ~The American Dream~ and Capitalism and (I am not an expert on hip-hop culture, so I will take your word for the macho bravaggio and hyper-competitive narcissism and its Thing-ness.) But one could also reframe Minaj, as much as she is dissing inferior females in her songs, she is also offering the subject position of a Top Dog woman to female listeners to identify with and sing along with. Which is a *bold* move, whether or not it's a radical one.

3) Sir Mixalot and his unproblematic status. It's amazing how many feminist people give that song a free pass, but I also understand why they *do*. Not to get all ~death of the author~ but there's 2 reasons why that song's problems are overlooked to make it an anthem: it posits two things which women have seized upon. 1) Big is beautiful (seizing upon this for fat acceptance) and 2) Black is beautiful (seizing upon this as a celebration of African-American beauty and its different standards). Of course, duh, the whole thing becomes re-problematised in all kinds of ways when instead of celebrating diversity, it just becomes a whole new impossible and imposed Standard Of Beauty. The song may be simple and crude, but the possible interpretations are complex, which is why this song is so beloved and canonical, and not, say, 2 Live Crew or whatever.

But there is this huge double standard, whereby men are allowed to say "Wow, I love sex" and that's considered a perfectly natural expression. But for a woman to say "Wow, I love sex*" is OMG WHY ARE YOU MAKING A SPECTACLE OF YOURSELF FOR THE MALE GAZE AND THE IMPLIED MALE AUDIENCE. This never ends.

*and for "sex" you can also substitute beauty, sexual display, inhabiting or showing off one's own body, dancing and all the carnal pleasure that is derived *from* dancing, as opposed to carnal pleasure derived from watching a body dance. "Act as if the male gaze does not exist, and dance and sex and preen and peacock away because of the inherent PLEASURE of these activities" is a radical notion. Which does not require the male gaze to disappear to maintain its radical stance.

i quite liked robin james' interpretation of "fuck them skinny bitches" as referring to White Feminists who mock or disdain black pop stars' use of sexuality. branwell completely otm about how male artists' problematic aspects always get folded into their complexity and thus artistic worth - oh poor emo drake's failures and manipulative narratives are the point, oh let's completely ignore that kanye's barbs against white america have to take place on a battleground of women's bodies because ultimately that's not a struggle we care about.

i think everyone praising this song and video is aware that nicki exists within the capitalist pop machine (LIKE ALL YOUR (MALE) FAVES FFS) and tbqh i don't think it's a good look demanding that female pop stars have to be the Perfect Feminist in order to get a sliver of credit for the subversions and statements, minor or major or contradictory or whatever, that they sneak into the heart of the mainstream. and this particular strain of "you can't be a feminist if you're a sex object or - god forbid! - a sex worker" is SO DAMN TIRED.

Oh! I'd read some of RJ's commentary on Minaj on It's Her Factory before, but I was avoiding that one because, well, Vice, ugh.

But this is (predictably) brilliant:

http://noisey.vice.com/en_uk/blog/all-your-bass-are-belong-to-us

During this, the first week of the new semester, I spent Monday's class doing introductions around the room. When everyone had finished mentioning their majors -- why they chose journalism/ad-PR, etc -- I said, "It's only fair I introduce myself too" because we're spending 14 weeks together and so on. When I told them that I try to be a freelance pop critic on the side they were like, OK, cool -- one girl asked what were my favorite songs of the moment. "I'll tell you some of the most interesting songs of the moment." I mentioned "Old English" and Jenny Lewis' "She's Not Me," and "All About That Bass" and "Anaconda" and "Shake It Off."

The guys of course tittered, both at the thought that an instructor knows this stuff and that I mentioned chart stuff. The girl who asked the initial question said she loved "Anaconda" and her "boyfriend can't understand why." A stupid song about butts, he said. I asked her if this offended her. "No because he never likes what I like, but I have to like what he likes." Several students, men and women, chuckled in recognition. I said, "Well, it IS a stupid song about butts, but do you think she has a right to be stupid about her butt? I mean, there's plenty of stupid songs about vaginas and breasts and butts by guys." One guy said he didn't like it because she "steals" Sir Mix a Lot. Did you have a problem when your favorite male rappers sample? He sort of laughed and said, no, I guess not.

Anyway, I didn't want to spend the first day of a writing strategies course discussing the aesthetics of sampling when we could be talking about this other shit, so we spent a few minutes reviewing our responses to "Shake It Off" and "Anaconda." What's interesting is how the girl who liked "Anaconda" also thought Swift was "whiny" and that "she's all about her private life" in her songs. I didn't want to go down that road either, so I asked for a show of hands: how many liked Drake? About eight students in a class of 20 raised hands, including several girls. "Do you ever think Drake is whiny?" Three or four of the hand raisers said yes. "Why does he get a pass then? Why is he allowed to be whiny?" They couldn't explain. I ended the discussion. I said, to paraphrase, part of what I want to do in this class is question assumptions about your bodies, death, the familiar, hence the name Writing Strategies, etc.

So, yeah, it's great how real life intersected with this thread!

(when I asked the Drake question I did precede it with MAFUCKAH NEVER TOLD US, the only Shameless Crowd Pleasing Moment, but they laughed so)

(hey dyl i specifically said pop radio and was speaking half-anecdatally - it got zero play up here on both the top-40 stalwart and the upstart chr station that is leaning more heavily toward edm (read: white people, mostly), but i know boston and race have their own suite of issues)

i don't think i was saying that anaconda's success didn't "count," just that it was more of a hit because of the video than anywhere else. (the primacy of youtube/vevo is why the lyric video has seen such a boom over the past few years.) that it outstreamed 'wrecking ball' yet did not go to no. 1 is very telling imo.

should also note that i find this song aesthetically pleasing BUT I ALSO think that difficult listening hour's points on capitalism and point-scoring are bang on, particularly the "zero-sum game" idea. nicki has long thrived as the lone woman in the boys' club of ymcmb (never mind hip-hop), and as someone who has been in that situation (minus the worldwide fame obv) membership is reached by being better than not just the other women, but the other men, and scorching the earth in such a way that makes people think of you as ... let's call it "woman-plus."

The fact that a non number one sells or streams more than a different song that reached number one is only really "telling" in relation to the week's competition. And nicki had a new song by Taylor swift..

It's not that Nicki's hypersexual post modern barbie thing is necessarily bad, but its no coincidence that that's the one pertains that is still viable in hip hop, whereas women like Boss or MC Lyte or Da Brat can't exist in commercial hip hop

Like a modern example being Sweetz P who released an amazing mixtape this year but she's frankly too butch for the market now

Kind of amused to note that Anaconda was originally produced with Missy in mind and thinking about how differently people would be discussing it if that had actually happened.

Admittedly it's more likely they just wouldn't be discussing it at all.

anthony i'm not trying to start an argument, i'm just saying that 'anaconda' exists behind a sort of eight ball because it is automatically excluded from the kind of stations that (still, in 2014) boast about playing hits but not rap, many of which make up the radio pool from which the hot 100's data is compiled

i'm not trying to start an argument either. i'm just giving context to nicki not making number one against "shake it off's" big debut vs miley making number one against "roar"'s sixth week on the chart, since the relative placing was described as "very telling"

also my name is da croupier

mr da croupier if you're nasty

Alfred, your class sounds amazing. I'm really glad this stuff is getting taught/discussed. And I'm double glad that it's you doing it.

Maura, we've tangled on this stuff before (my husband's stupid record collection springs to mind) so I'm going to try to tread carefully to try to avoid conflict.

I get what you're saying about the whole Loophole Girl phenomenon; I've been there, too. Being the first/only girl in the room is often fraught. But there's a difference between "criticising the woman who conforms to gendered expectations in order to get/stay in that room" and "criticising the structures that put her in the room, and keep her the only girl in the room." The bad/annoying dialogue around Minaj leans too heavily on the former, IMO. This troubles me.

Nicki Minaj most analyzed not-very-good rapper in the game

"It's not that Nicki's hypersexual post modern barbie thing is necessarily bad, but its no coincidence that that's the one pertains that is still viable in hip hop, whereas women like Boss or MC Lyte or Da Brat can't exist in commercial hip hop

Like a modern example being Sweetz P who released an amazing mixtape this year but she's frankly too butch for the market now

― ra's al goole (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Saturday, August 30, 2014 7:02 AM (1 hour ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink"

this is on-point tho

someone brought up Missy and it's worth asking if Missy could blow up in today's market? I kinda wonder....

are iggy and nicki basically the only 2 commercially big female rappers now?

I think a new artist who looked like missy could definitely blow up today based off striking, novel, eccentric but undeniably pop songs and videos today. That's different than "if supa dupa fly dropped today would it blow up" because many of those qualities it had have been normalized

yeah it's interesting because Nicki and Iggy give you the impression of "female rappers have to be like THIS to be successful now" but Missy stepped into a field where Lil Kim and Foxy Brown had kind of presented a new standard of female rapper in the same way and she thrived anyway. i think the answer is just that Missy was a singular artist and there's always room for someone unique and galvanizing to stand out.

Honestly I think having "shake it off," "anaconda," "all about the bass," "fancy" etc at the top confirms missy-style hip-hop/pop is welcome even if people find the artists more regressive or less heroic

Some dude what about Lauryn, rah digga, early eve, Mia x etc?
Are you guys arguing that it's not narrower now?

no it's def narrower now. just saying, even then Missy seemed relatively unlikely as a major star.

"Does the 10s feel as rich as the 90s" and "could a new missy even happen" are two different things

I like lex's accidental honesty in this critique of anaconda upthread:

"lots of it really, really works."

really fascinating conversations going on here

(maura, i apologize for derailing the larger points you were making, which i agree with, with my quibbling over chart minutiae)

re: "But, it's like... there's a whole massive ILX thread about Billboard and the marginalisation of African-American music. It's been noted, repeatedly, that PoC, especially Women of Colour, have been excluded and all but erased from the upper echelons of the charts. And yet Minaj seems to manage the impossible, and chart a single at Number Two - and yet there is a whole segment of ILM which *seems* deeply invested in somehow explaining that it either didn't happen, or didn't count? Why? What am I missing, or am I reading this completely wrong?"

I don't think people are saying this (I could be wrong) so much as it seems as if most people think its chart position is going to be a happy accident but short-lived. I'd love to be proven wrong on this point (and IIRC the Billboard article did mention that radio may be coming around) but it's not really out-there as a prediction.

again, I really do think the VMAs have a non-trivial amount to do with "Anaconda" reaching #2 -- being placed at the beginning of a major awards show that is apparently playing in reruns enough for my mom to call me last night and complain that she's been in some kind of "Groundhog Day" loop of the announcer presenting 5 Seconds of Summer (yes, yes, anecdotal, but still) is not meaningless. (It's also the conditions under which "Wrecking Ball" debuted, for what it's worth.)

also non-trivial: nicki minaj has a very large, very active fanbase; it's not like we're talking about an upstart nobody here.

(that said, the "skinny bitches" thing referring to anything other than skinny girls in the club is a massive, massive stretch. it's fine on its own! she who has never, not once in her life, made a grumpy comment about skinny people gets to throw stones etc.)

i'm not rooting for women of color to do well on the charts by any means necessary. i would like it to be because good songs that they are making are given the right structural support to have that opportunity. Not that they're releasing thirstbucket singles

that reads weird, but what i'm trying to say is: complaining about too many white ppl on the charts doesn't mean i'm going to root for any old bullshit just because it's by a woman of color and happens to be succeeding

nb i like this song more than most people do, but also let's not pretend that the jlo/iggy azalea record on the way isn't just going to pop out and wipe the floor with it

ignore my first post it was very badly worded

When was the last time jlo wiped the floor with anyone

I mean yeah Iggy is almost vanilla ice hot right now but I wouldn't assume the lack of a guest spot from her is all that kept "I love you papi" from hitting #1 instead of whatever low berth it got

the multiple singles with hundreds of millions of views she's had in the last 5 years?

i dunno man i'm pretty confident this one is gonna be big: http://www.audiomack.com/song/jlo/booty-remix

idk, the last Lopez single to have any real impact was On the Floor, which was 3 years ago. Since then it's been a slew of singles that go nowhere, and videos that do decently over time but don't really "take off". And it's not as if some of those singles didn't have hit potential too. Her last album also opened to terrible numbers. She's been a persistent force in pop but hasn't been on top of the game in quite some time. Even On The Floor was a one-off.

Still not over how "I Luh Ya Papi" failed.

I think you guys are underestimating Iggy