Nicki Minaj is tired of talking about her butt. In a recent interview with GQ, writer Taffy Brodesser-Akner was determined to get to the bottom of Minaj's racy "Anaconda" video.
Minaj, however, was having none of it.
When Brodesser-Akner suggested that "Anaconda" — both the song and video — is about "the female form and the male obsession with it," Minaj disagreed.
"She is just talking about two guys that she dated in the past and what they’re good at and what they bought her and what they said to her. It’s just cheeky, like a funny story,” Minaj asserted about the character she plays in the video. “I don’t know what there is to really talk about,” she further insisted. “I’m being serious. I just see the video as being a normal video.”
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To her credit, Brodesser-Akner wasn't satisfied with Minaj's assertion that the ass-centric video and album art weren't imbued with a deeper meaning, and continued to push the singer for something more.
"You can't pretend that there isn't some extreme sexual commentary going on in the video, right? A steamy women's-only jungle mecca, aerobic slithering, drumming on a dancer's ass," Brodesser-Akner wrote. "There, in the video, Nicki is twerking and crawling across the floor to poor, hapless Drake, sitting in a puddle of his own anticipatory blue balls. She slaps him before he can touch her, and that has to mean something.
"I knew that I wanted a gym theme." Minaj said, "And that's that."
The rapper's reluctance discuss the impact that her famous derriere has had on culture is understandable, since that's likely all anyone's been asking her about since "Anaconda" obliterated the web when it dropped this summer. Since then, America's obsession with all things "booty" has reached its nadir, with artists like Iggy Azalea and Jennifer Lopez riding Minaj's, er, coattails to the top of the charts. Minaj's butt has had its (many) moments in the spotlight, and Minaj has said all she has to say on the matter. Like most artists who like to stir shit up, she seems ready to move on to the next conversation starter. Maybe it's time we let her. (GQ)