“Are you a Nicki fan?” Guest host Michael Rapport asked Wendy Osefu on the Wendy Williams show, to which she famously replied: “Am I a Nicki fan? What? Pull up in the Sri Lanka!” The actual lyrics Osefu attempted to quote were from Nicki Minaj’s verse on the hit Kanye West song, “Monster.”
I started memorizing Minaj’s rap lyrics at the ripe age of eleven, and as a self-proclaimed ex-Barb, I can confidently speak for other Minaj fans on how disappointed and betrayed we are in her recent descent into MAGA conservatism. Her most notable recent offense involved joining president Donald Trump on stage at a rally in Michigan where many viral moments occurred on Oct. 25.
While Minaj joined Trump on stage to praise his political agenda, many people remember when she criticized Trump in her 2010 “Nicki Minaj: My Time Now” MTV documentary, where she claimed “Donald Trump can say ‘You’re fired.’ Let Martha Stewart run her company the same way and be the same way! ‘Oh, evil [expletive]!’ But Donald Trump, he gets to hang out with young [expletive] and have 50 different wives and just be cool. Oh, Donald, we love ya!”.
Minaj’s outlandish camp theatrical aesthetics and outward criticism of misogyny made her so appealing to many fans of rap music. To see her proudly praise a political party that has been historically misogynistic, homophobic and racist is disheartening.
The camp aesthetic is a style that expresses exaggeration and irony over serious, traditional tastes. It’s a subversion of mainstream society by taking what’s seen as “trashy” and exaggerating it to the point of a theatrical representation.
Camp is correlated with the LGBTQ+ community because of its themes of non-conformity, which were first expressed in Susan Sontag’s 1964 essay “Notes on ‘Camp’.” Sontag originally claimed camp to be apolitical and disengaged, however queer theorists believe that camp is inherently political in the way that it challenges the norm.
Minaj’s debut featured many aesthetic outfits, notably her “Pink Friday” era, in which she featured many colorful wigs and exaggerated expressions of her alter ego, Roman Zolanski. To be seen as a notable camp figure and then turn on the queer and Black fanbase that lifted her up is a betrayal.
“Island girl, Donald Trump want me go home,” Minaj rapped in her 2016 song “Black Barbies”. But ever since she received that fake Trump Visa, it seems like she has forgotten her roots, especially as a Trinidadian woman.
After riding the trend of camp and queer aesthetics for so long, Minaj has now shown us her true colors, saying that she should be allowed to change her mind. It is up to the fans to decide whether or not to continue to support her.
Just know that I will not.
