Nicki Minaj - The Pink Print (2014)

metalocalypse was pretty great and absolutely had all kinds of weird illuminati vs fascism subplots; it's worth noting it's by the same guy who did Home Movies
very weird way to shift blame there

she needs to apologize for releasing nothing but flops this year

although i like 'yasss bish'

lol the artist has spoken, and clearly wants us to know his knowledge of art and culture extends beyond the last ten years

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.
First, I’m not apologizing for my work, nor will I dodge the immediate question. The flags, armbands, and gas mask (and perhaps my use of symmetry?) are all representative of Nazism.

But a majority of the recognizable models/symbols are American: MQ9 Reaper Drone, F22 Raptor, Sidewinder missile, security cameras, M60, SWAT uniform, General’s uniform, the Supreme court, and the Lincoln Memorial. What’s also American is the 1st Amendment, which I’ve unexpectedly succeeded in showing how we willfully squeeze ourselves out of that right every day.

Despite the fact heavy religious and economic themes were glossed over, there’s also Russian T-90 tanks, Belgian FN FAL, German mp5 (not manufactured until 1966), an Italian Ferrari, and a Vatican Pope.

As far as an explanation, I think its actually important to remind younger generations of atrocities that occurred in the past as a way to prevent them from happening in the future. And the most effective way of connecting with people today is through social media and pop culture. So if my work is misinterpreted because it’s not a sappy tearjerker, sorry I’m not sorry. What else is trending?

lol "why did i dress up pop stars in the iconography of a genocidal regime? to prevent such atrocities from happening again." this fucking guy

so where did nicki get "metalocalypse" from

Those who forget history are doomed to eat Nicki Minaj's b-hole

What’s also American is the 1st Amendment, which I’ve unexpectedly succeeded in showing how we willfully squeeze ourselves out of that right every day.

What’s also American is the 1st Amendment, which I’ve unexpectedly succeeded in showing how we willfully squeeze ourselves out of that right every day.

What’s also American is the 1st Amendment, which I’ve unexpectedly succeeded in showing how we willfully squeeze ourselves out of that right every day.

(and perhaps my use of symmetry?)

geometry teachers teaching isosceles triangles, please note

haha is there literally anything Nicki does that isn't subverting something? like does she wake up in the morning and subvert her bowl of cereal?

― punk rocketeer (upper mississippi sh@kedown), Tuesday, November 11, 2014 12:26 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

just got an image of an album cover where she's sitting down with a bowl of froot loops on her head

― linda cardellini (zachlyon), Tuesday, November 11, 2014 12:38 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

maybe there'll be a franken berry tie-in soon

― maura, Tuesday, November 11, 2014 12:40 PM (3 hours ago) Bookmark

Usher beat her to it tho

http://i.imgur.com/fjeQBVC.png

Well I guess this isn't really a subversion

Looking forward to Nicki's hot take

maybe "a. loucas" started blathering about sin city when nicki started yelling at him, both having been duped by this artist into reminding kids about atrocities

"ugh...is this song just wayne drake and nicki dry humping each other? that's it, i'm making nicki cobra commander and drake a celibate"

And the one billionth internet rage to let's make fun of apology circlejerk continues. *Sigh* I just want the album.

Sorry your product consumption is being interrupted by reminders of atrocities, sheeple

i cant imagine being 'offended' by it, it is hilarious though

like how could they not realize what they were doing?

very bizarre video

artists are running political campaigns right now, nicki's stumbling quite a bit, i wonder what nate silver thinks about her odds of selling more than 80k

Sorry your product consumption is being interrupted by reminders of atrocities, sheeple

― da croupier, Tuesday, November 11, 2014 1:05 PM (57 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

But how is acting fake outrage any better? There have been more offensive, cultural things out there that remind people of historical atrocities. This is very small scale on that barometer. For the past few years, the glut of "offensive" pop culture news headlines has gotten to the point that dialogue isn't really made and follow through. Instead, the people offended just want to be seen as smarter than everyone in the room and offender get more attention than they probably deserved. In this case, the director who did seem like a dick on his twitter page. It's just a circle jerk that feeds people's egos.

what are more offensive cultural things out there?

and how does lil soul brother determine what is "fake" outrage

the thing is, this kind of IS like a clickhole article parodying outrage or something, i mean its a god damn godwin's law version of 'blurred lines'

ill take my first post back, ~obviously~ i can see how this would offend people, but ffs

i guess it's like idk...i sense that maybe if you're someone whose family went through shit in WW2 or w/e there'd be something offensive about artists who enjoy using such fascist imagery as a fashion statement, which is what it is first and foremost. distant second is some subversive shit i guess.

the tone deaf clumsiness of her political campaign is a secondary tragedy to the mind-numbing banality of her recent music

that alex ross article about the frankfurt school arguments coming back into fashion was spot on, feel like those dissensus dudes who were concerned about the fascistic impulse of juelz santana records were just a few years too early.

like artists who claim they're apolitical abt this fashion statement, they just like how it looks...i mean the fashion itself was a political statement when it was being used by its progenitors.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=67lKPD_PIpQ

in this dystopian present there will be a subcaste of people who cosplay and dance complex choreographed numbers to nicki minaj for money
one day they shall rise

what are more offensive cultural things out there?

― guess that bundt gettin eaten (Alfred, Lord Sotosyn), Tuesday, November 11, 2014 2:21 PM (5 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

Any cultural object/artifact (movie, toy, book, etc.) whose sole intent is to reinforce a minority is lesser than the majority consuming said cultural object. That was more prevalent in the past than now, but these things still exist. I think the "Only" lyric video wasn't meant to reinforce a negative opinion on a particular minority directly. It was just a failed attempt to be dark/edgy for Nicki. I guess a way to notify that "rap" Nicki was still going to be present on her album.

By two weeks, some other video/picture/whatever will replace the "Only" lyric video as the next thing to be offended by.

star movies cafe in the philippines is a thing btw
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fBD7PDUXEmg

By two weeks, some other video/picture/whatever will replace the "Only" lyric video as the next thing to be offended by.

you would almost think there's a lot of offensive, stupid shit in the world

like yes personally my reaction to fascist imagery underscoring self-made young money slash fiction was more "lol idiots" than "how dare you" but i don't begrudge the adl taking it a little more seriously and i definitely am not ready to say the problem with the world these days is too much sensitivity

isnt it entirely possible that this was intended to outrage

did you read the apologies? i'd say "yes" re: the director (in a "what's wrong with being sexy?" sense) and "no" re: nicki

v brashly cynical

praying some reporter bridges the gap between "i wanted to teach the children through a dense tapestry of iconography" and "he got the idea from metalocalypse"

where are the the crucified monkeys?

that alex ross article about the frankfurt school arguments coming back into fashion was spot on, feel like those dissensus dudes who were concerned about the fascistic impulse of juelz santana records were just a few years too early.

― deej loaf (D-40)

good to see a stand being made itt against the dreaded spectre of Cultural Marxism!

ps, pretty sure that you don't need to have read Dialectic of Enlightenment to think that fetishizing and popularising (and making money off) fash aesthetics is Kinda Bad

that was the original nutta robin carmody

drawing an equivalence between him (the no-mediocre likes of which u will never see again) and limp thinkpiece churnalism is a book-burning purge of history more balefully fascistic than anything itt

Dip-set dip-set dip-set

adorno >> carmody >> everything else

tbf to that carmody bit, even a decade on the westwood world premiere of 'santana town' & 'get em girls' (with the original sample) back 2 back will forever remain one of the most incredible bits of (national!!) radio i can recall.... the shouting, the bombs, the reloads, the reloads, the reloads, the reloads... reader it must have been at least a full half hour of third steve reich nuremberg rally sturm & drang

the gangsta rap nazi hotel foxtrot

rolling irrelevant rap bro internet thread 2014 [Started by ol' Wrink P's thinkpiece (some dude) in January 2014, last updated Thursday, 13 November 2014 14:11 by surfboard dudes get wiped out, totally] 29 new answers

lmao summoned

Actually I think "I apologise / take full responsibility" b/w "it was inspired by videogames" was an incredibly astute way of her / her team to handle it.

Because it brings up the troublesome tradition of Nazi iconography in video games (like, how many first person shooter games use "the Nazis!" as a lazy, bad signifier of "bad guys" or "evil" even while still getting to depict them in all their well designed iconography and lavish detail?) and, given the recent brouhaha about representation and ~ethics~ in videogames, I think "why do game designers get a free pass to throw nazi imagery around in any way they like, without having it problematised, but Nicki doesn't?" I think that's a valid question, whether or not Minaj or her team intended it to be.

...

I think there's a whole world of grey area between the positions of "every single thing Nicki does, from breakfast cereal onwards is subversive!!!" (which no one, to be fair, has actually taken) and "nothing that Nicki Minaj ever does, can *ever* be taken as subversive, that's like calling breakfast cereal subversive" (which is a very dumb argument, and some people do seem to be trying it on in the thread.)

It is not a good song, fair enough. (Though I'm not ~offended~ by it, I can see that there's an interesting twist in getting a bunch of dudes considered (by many; though obviously not by ILX) to be sex symbols to talk about how they would *like* to get with Nicki, but they're all not quite good enough for her - the power dynamics in that are funny to me.) Under most circumstances, "nazi iconography" these days I'd file under "lazy, bad signifiers; played out; try harder to be ~offensive~ if that's your game."

Given her statements, it would have to take a hell of a lot of our friend Roland to pull the kind of "death of the author" required to say that it is flipping White Supremacy - or rather that the flip is *intentional* - but still, that imagery, of taking ranks of Nazis, red-swathed colonnades, tons of fascist/empire artillery and in the centre of it all, where you're expecting Hitler or some Aryan nordic dude with slicked back blond hair, you've got an African-American woman, that image is still *striking* as a punchline, whether you choose to read that punchline as subversive or merely a bad joke.

"It's a shit single" is a valid criticism. "There's absolutely nothing subversive in any way about this imagery" is something that ignores gender and race dynamics in a pretty wilful way. But, I think, myself, given the reaction to her previous work, there's no way she could have tried to claim "it's flipping White Supremacy" and not get pilloried for it. With regards to rock/pop iconography and a world where so many white, male rockstars from the Rolling Stones to Pink Floyd to the Sex Pistols to the Stooges to Duran Duran to sodding Interpol have seen "Nazi Iconography" as just one more tool in the image playbox of ~generating controversy~ and received the benefit of the doubt as to their intentions, Nicki Minaj is going to get held to a different standard over it; that's a given in our culture.

there's no way she could have tried to claim "it's flipping White Supremacy" and not get pilloried for it.

one it would have been a load of shit

many white, male rockstars from the Rolling Stones to Pink Floyd to the Sex Pistols to the Stooges to Duran Duran to sodding Interpol have seen "Nazi Iconography" as just one more tool in the image playbox of ~generating controversy~ and received the benefit of the doubt as to their intentions,

all these happened a long time ago in a different media landscape

Pink Floyd used Nazi Iconography as a metaphor to show someone becoming completely unhinged so I'm not sure that there's anything to criticize them for beyond the existence of the metaphor; it certainly isn't done in a manner that endorses the source material.

I haven't watched Nicki's video yet so I have no direct opinion on it aside from finding the image from the resulting conversation of her subverting a bowl of cereal funny.

http://s2.hubimg.com/u/9111945_f260.jpg

just my $0.02

stepping up your game there missingno

he's no raccoon shittalki IMO