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Why Nicki Minaj Threw It All Away For Fascism

95m 49s

Why Nicki Minaj Threw It All Away For Fascism

The transcript offers a critical examination of Nicki Minaj’s public persona, political statements, and personal history, arguing that her alignment with conservative movements—particularly Turning Point USA—represents a deliberate and problematic strategy to gain influence. Her rhetoric, especially regarding gender and race, is seen as propagandistic, promoting a narrative that downplays white women’s beauty while positioning Black women as the ultimate standard of beauty. This is contrasted with a history of hostility toward other female artists, including Cardi B and Megan The Stallion, revealing a pattern of entrenched misogyny. The narrative is further undermined by personal circumstances: her brother’s conviction for child sexual assault, her marriage to a man with a history of sexual offenses, and her support of these individuals through bail payments and public defense. Critics argue that Minaj exemplifies a broader cycle of abuse, where those who have suffered trauma internalize the logic of power abuse and repeat it in new contexts. Her political shifts—particularly her support for Donald Trump—are viewed not as genuine convictions but as tactical maneuvers to secure acceptance in conservative spaces. The analysis concludes that Minaj’s actions reflect a deep entanglement with abusive systems, using performance and self-preservation to navigate power dynamics, rather than offering any meaningful critique or reform. This not only undermines her credibility as a cultural figure but also highlights a larger societal failure to address the normalization of harmful behavior in entertainment and politics.

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Dear young men, you have amazing role models, like our handsome, dashing president. Handsome, dashing president. So Nicki Minaj, as I'm sure you've seen, joined Erica Kirk on stage at Turning Point USA's America Fest, which is basically the huge conference that Turning Point does every year since 2021 to make content that will indoctrinate American youth into conservatism. And I wanted to play one clip that I selected from their discussion. If as Black women, we felt that we were not being represented and not being admired, honored for our beauty, if we felt like that as Black women, why would we want to do that to other women? Why would we now need to make other people downplay their beauty so that we can feel, "No, that's not how it works. I don't need someone with blonde hair and blue eyes to downplay their beauty because I know my beauty." Do you understand? It doesn't bother me that a woman feels and says, that she's beautiful. Why shouldn't she feel that? Why have we gotten to a point where certain colors or certain kinds of people have to be afraid of loving themselves and loving the way they look? Your thoughts? It is a big year for Nicki Minaj haters. I never believed that I could get such a. You see? You see? You see? You see? You see? You see? You see? You see? You see? You see? You see? Yes. Yes. Yes. husband i don't know i don't know what the state of nikki minaj affairs are although i do know it's looking financially bleak they are looking to foreclose that house so yeah we'll get into that obviously something is going on because it's just clear propaganda i went and watched the entire thing and you can see that nikki minaj is she not only has no fucking idea what she's talking about they were like tell us about your relationship with god she was like but she would like pause and erica kirk would try to like pick up the slack like use that opportunity she'd say some bullshit about how much she loves nikki to try to give her a second to like come up with the talking points but every question was designed like nikki sits and goes oh what do you want to say to young women and nikki was like and then she pulls out black women stop hating on white women that's that's what she comes up with the most oppressed group in america right now are blonde hair blue eyes white women who are being made to feel like they don't look good like they can't be beautiful it's such explicit propaganda it's clear like they had shit in whatever contract she signed like whatever amount of money she took from this this thing they were clear that you need to hit certain points because she went out of her way to say i have been all over the world i am a superstar but nothing has ever felt important like what i'm doing here i've performed for crowd huge crowds all around the world and no matter how many songs i do on that stage it didn't mean as much as this because this is a direct link for younger people this is a direct link between young people and god this is the thing i believed in the i believe several things i believe nikki is a jackass i do believe that nikki has stupid views that that go to the right but i don't believe that nikki minaj believes what the fuck she's talking about the fact that the right is eating it up just speaks to how little you have to say and do to impress them well right because like to your point like she's not even really making any coherent sense it's just like they hear the buzzwords of like you can be blonde you can be a man like and people are like we love this it's jd vance's whole thing he said it at this conference he said we don't want to apologize for being white anymore in the united states of america you don't have to apologize for being white anymore there's a large cohort of white people in the united states currently led by jd vance and erica kirk who believe that the biggest injustice of our time is that some leftists on twitter didn't like sydney sweeney's jeans commercial and nikki minaj has been told exactly what these people want to hear and she can't even fully recite that messaging but they don't care they just need like the vague contours of it and one thing that we talk about over and over again on this podcast is how easy it is to charm these people especially when you're that famous because they are so hungry for validation from mainstream celebrities it was interesting because even when people are as unprincipled as nikki minaj is to do all of this the only time she tried she she went on some little like rant where you could tell these are real opinions eventually it was in relation to herself and talking about her perceived beliefs and enemies and at any time she spoke about herself she accidentally caught herself realizing like oh shit i'm saying too much about how i'm mistreated as a woman and every time she said it she realized like oh shit oh shit let me take that back uh god and and and ultimately i'm here to say we we need we need trump in office it's so sad because all it's me is how down bad she is in whatever situation she's in because the reality is they could clap up there because you're validating them all you want like that's what it means to be a token that's what it means to be there to serve a purpose it does not mean it absolutely does not mean that they're invested in you or give a fuck about you in any way they're not going to stream their music and i know she must know that so it tells you that whatever it is that she's getting she needs so badly in whatever current situation she's in and that it's scary to think it really strikes me as like the rock bottom and i'm like i don't know what i'm doing i don't know what i'm doing i'm a grift where like a huge part of the appeal is that she is kind of presenting like she's switching sides and i think that that is a huge part of what the right loves about having nikki minaj on their side in air quotes is like they love the idea that a huge mainstream celebrity who at one point was associated with being more liberal is now all of a sudden being like oh actually i love trump like that idea of we pulled someone from the mainstream and particularly in these spaces with like erica kirk turning point usa they want to create the illusion that people on the left have like gotten fed up with like how how bad the left is how bad identity politics is but it's not even true so it's like the appeal here is so so so cheap and i'm sure people like jd vance understand that people in the audience probably are more easily fooled by this illusion that's happening in front of them hello hello and welcome back to a bit fruity so an analysis of nikki minaj's descent into becoming american fascism's newest celebrity mascot is probably the most requested episode i've embarked on up to this point it's also an episode that i was initially not going to do because the magnitude of nikki's celebrity is just so enormous and profound i thought there was no way i could do this episode without nikki minaj's descent into becoming american fascism's newest celebrity mascot without leaving stuff out and i still think that's true but i also think that that's okay because you don't need to know everything nikki minaj has ever said or posted in the last 20 years to draw a solid map of what i think happened here and i also think that much like donald trump and like jeffree star who we've covered at length on this podcast and who nikki recorded a song with nikki has inundated the public with so much bad behavior for so long that people especially her fans learn to never expect better from her you overwhelm people with this sense that you're not a good person but you shouldn't be expected to be one either which is a great way of making sure people never hold you accountable for any of your specific misdeeds and so i want to resist that trap today and i think we can do it like the rest of us nikki's personal professional and political timelines exist alongside each other and i think by weaving together elements from each of those timelines we can understand how she went from female rap superstar with millions of lgbtq fans to whatever she's doing on stage with fucking erica kirk and to do that we are a trio today that i've wanted to get together for quite a long time welcome to the show cat ten barge of spitfire news and ole lauren who is a lawyer who does cultural commentary as lorna di on youtube and she is the woman who famously took down eric adams on the breakfast club fuck eric adams and good riddance to him welcome to the show both of you hey thanks for having us i want to know broad strokes how are each of you feeling about this topic because i know we all come into this with baggage i think like a lot of people there was a time in my life where i loved nikki minaj like i was a really big fan i remember in high school and in early college like it was a point of pride that i had memorized and could do the entire monster verse rite of passage in high school when i would like dance on the sidelines of basketball games like the nikki minaj songs were always my favorite and i really loved her for a long time and then as the years went by things started to really pile up where i was like this is terrible the fandom is terrible the barbs are awful the like sort of ability to put that aside and still enjoy the music started to pile up and i was like oh my god i'm gonna be like oh my god i'm gonna be stretch thinner and thinner and thinner and then it like i think again many many people in the last few years it just completely snapped so in 2025 on this current day i am a certified nikki minaj hater and i and i have been for quite some time but it's important to note that i did not start out that way and i don't think anybody starts out that way like people like to present it as though the barbs contrary to what they like you lead you to believe that people are just against nikki minaj there is nobody that likes rap in the slightest that doesn't hate women that was not a nikki minaj fan out the gate i loved nikki minaj in the beginning in high school i remember like i remember being there was a time where you barely used to see nikki minaj like you were itching to see what like a video actually show her in it i loved nikki the problem with nikki is squarely this every injustice or unfair or systemic like reality of what nikki minaj has had to go through in her career that would have made you champion her in the beginning she is not against any of that and she hates nikki minaj when she doesn't see other women who come up have to experience it like i think nikki minaj comes from an era in hip-hop when the women were selected by a male conglomerate of some kind you're like she's the first lady of young money you have you know olivia with g unit you have uh remi ma with terror squad you have rod you have you know what i mean they're picked by these collectives and they're only allowed to really be one they're pitted against each other and so nikki minaj kind of comes around at this time like she emerges as kind of like the queen and there's some somebody that you see dominating like hip-hop and rap in a way that women were not previously it felt like there was a you know a ceiling on what women could commercially what heights they could commercially get to and so you supported her she was dope artistically she's a beautiful gal and so when you would see like her initial like feuds with like little kim when little kim was saying all these things about her like telling you that her attitude is this that she is not somebody who pays homage and all this everybody was inclined to be on nikki minaj's and i think what happens is as time goes on you live to see her be everything that you defended her against because cardi b is the beginning of nikki minaj showing her ass in a way that has just been indisputable and i think what it is is that cardi represents so the opening of floodgates for women in rap ever since cardi b there are tons of women rappers you like so many you can pick from and nikki hates that you did a song with cardi you did a song with meg you see she did a song with ice spice and then two seconds later she's talking shit on these people because you can never kiss nikki minaj his ass enough you could find interviews and clips a lotto and all these people talking about how much inspiration they found in nikki minaj how much they love nikki minaj it's never enough when somebody wants to be the only one in the room and it's that clear from how she's come at every single fucking woman to come out it's hard to feel no not hard to i don't feel sorry for somebody who is willing to be a pillar of the same institutions that they felt like were unfair to them because they wanted to be only them so that she was already that she was already an unprincipled like bearer of misogyny on women and hip-hop and then you add that but now you want to be a fascist propagandist bitch shall we get into a little nikki minaj early life we love chronology on this podcast when the ambulance is passed she already heard that the podcast has started the barbs have intercepted the feed and they're on their way it's the barb siege of a bit fruity literally everyone change your phone number now because they're all gonna be leaked we're gonna get into early life but the only other thing i want to say about this is that like i said up top this isn't gonna be like a documentary episode there's just too much so i'm gonna talk about her early life and early career rather swiftly we're going to identify the parts of it that i think are relevant in evaluating what happened to her today so nikki was born in port of spain the capital of which is an island in the caribbean both of her parents were gospel singers her dad was abusive and addicted to alcohol and crack cocaine and allegedly committed arson on their house when nikki was five nikki spent most of her earliest years living in poverty in her grandmother's house in trinidad with her 11 cousins also random not fun fact but i guess just like fact her dad was killed in a hit and run in long island in 2021 really dark stuff there are 900 million things to to kick nikki's back in about and we should be kicking her back in including like the hypocrisy of being an immigrant actively aligning herself with a fascist administration as xenophobic but what we should not be doing is leaning into xenophobia and i see a lot of people that have always seen this gal as the queen of rap from queens new york going out of their way to talk about her like an alien and i think we should relax on all that i say that as a caribbean immigrant like don't take it out on trinidad it's nikki nikki has talked about growing up in a home where there was domestic violence like she has talked about a lot of these details publicly and sort of corroborated them but when she gets into feuds with other people specifically cardi b um a few years ago cardi posted this like long rant on twitter where she makes like further sort of allegations about the beginning of nikki's life i'm just gonna read part of this she said you said out your own mouth that the little girl in you hasn't forgiven your mother yet and that's because your mother hasn't forgiven you and that's because your mom used to stay silent when your dad used to touch on you every time he did that crack pipe i know you experienced a lot of trauma and abuse but drugs is not going to help you you need to go to therapy now and then she like carries this into more allegations about the present day the more that i have learned about nikki's early life i always like kind of suspected just based on the people who she aligns herself with and like what we've seen of her over the years that she is someone who is part of like a cycle of abuse that has not been broken you see the fact that she is like the ultimate cannot break the cycle the ultimate like she is continuing this cycle she's pulling up the ladder behind her professionally when it comes to other women in the field she's like aligning herself with men in the industry who also perpetuate abusive behavior and it's like that clearly stems from something in her past from like a lot of like trauma it's an explanation it's never an excuse or a justification but you can kind of see how from like this dark sort of beginning and these darker life circumstances like how she evolves into the person who she is today around the time that her dad committed arson on their own house nikki's mom had gotten a green card to come live in america in new york city in south jamaica queens and shortly after nikki and her older brother jelani came to live with her so nikki ended up growing up in queens she attended laguardia high school for performing arts in new york city which is the setting of the movie fame fame i'm gonna live for it laguardia high school is famously extremely hard to get into and i think especially before like the advent of tiktok where you could just get discovered for your talent online it was like the birthplace of like every modern entertainer if you go to a tiktok page it's wild nikki also worked at red lobster where she was famously fired for yelling at a customer who didn't tip and stole her pen she chased down the customer to their car and banged on the window to return her pen which i defend her for i think that's like a completely valid thing to do and i disagree with her firing from red lobster in the mid-2000s nikki rapped locally with groups in new york she was posting songs and songs about her family and her family trying to get discovered like everyone else in the mid-2000s on myspace she released a series of mixtapes in 2007 and 2008 which caught the attention of lil wayne who signed her to his then burgeoning record label young money she she starts to make it lil wayne features her on his music and connects her with other big artists including mariah carey jay-z robin thick also i think relevant in her origin story is obviously like lil wayne is instrumental to her career with ymc and b and all of that but there was a time where gucci man and and walk in that kind of collective like had a role in their career too and gucci famously when gucci used to act a fool on twitter back in the day and he went on this long like twitter fucking tirade like accusing her like sleeping all the way through the industry and sleeping with him and sleeping with this one and sleeping with the next one and it was just something that like nikki denied and everybody like defended her against like this is toxic horrible misogyny and like the way that you know you're slut shaming they've only for nikki to turn around and 10 plus years and do the same things to megan the stallion every part of nikki minaj is coked out this track i said it yeah that's what it was like all of that was nothing more but the nastiest rendition of the things that was done to nikki minaj and that's what she was doing to meg the stallion even knowledge is a is a hard person to feel any compassion for because there's nothing you could point to that no matter how horrible it is that she's experienced that you have not seen her make a mockery of to other people's october 2010 nikki is famously featured on kanye west's monster which everybody loved it it was an iconic verse and nobody loved it more than charlie kirk and candace owens which we're gonna circle back on that much later in this outline the following month november 2010 nikki releases her debut album pink friday which had the largest sales week for a female rap album in the 21st century it was off to the races for nikki from there i remember when pink friday came out entertainment weekly did this like big spread where they were like it's nikki minaj's time and it was like the image of her and those long like photoshopped legs to make her look like a barbie doll i remember sitting in piano lessons i was probably like in like fourth grade and i was like reading this and i was just like so captivated by this woman i didn't even at the time really have familiarity with her and i was like oh my god she's so pretty with the music yet but the imagery of what she was doing was like so captivating to me and it was so unlike anything that i had ever seen before like the electric pink wig the outfits that she wore the way that she carried herself the confidence that she exuded and then you listen to the early verses and you listen to like the work that she was doing at the time and it's very clear why even before she released her debut she had become such a favorite in the industry like if anyone wanted a female rapper to be a part of the music industry she was like i don't know i don't want to be a part of the music industry but if anyone wanted a female rapper to be a part of the music industry they would go to her and there is like kind of that manufactured scarcity in the industry where it's like she was like one of the few options but it's also just like her immense talent and sort of like adaptability to all of these different genres all of these different people she was such a talented writer and i think that like it just spoke to why she had this almost universal appeal at this point in time yeah i like i said i loved nikki minaj in high school nikki minaj poster on my boarding school wall i remember i think the thing i loved most about nikki and i remember is there used to be a mystique around nikki before things became the time period that we live in where you see everything everybody and everything is just so overexposed like i remember like you'd be hyped when you see like they put nikki on a cover or something like you want to go buy it to go get the poster out of the magazine to go put it on your wall like you were excited when like young money actually put out like the music video and nikki minaj was in it i remember like when massive attack dropped like it was just a song a single nobody even thinks about but i remember nikki minaj had few music videos at the time and being so excited for that and then when you think about like the original mystique around nikki is like nikki was talked about a lot but she wasn't necessarily talking to us i think honestly nikki minaj how nikki minaj has gone down south is a testament to why we really need to start shutting the fuck up in 2026 like everybody is too fucking accessible you're too overexposed you to you telling it i think there's a low moral bar we have for our like artists in terms of what we will accept quietly from them and enjoy our music we could know like i said we know a little way in all of that politics ain't good there's a lot of artists who we know they've said a little something but they keep it quiet but nikki minaj like think about nikki minaj has been going on coked out for the rants for years now saying despicable shit to people and there's a real trump like quality to that where it's like trump similarly you're going to be like oh my god i'm going to be in a very similar way and because the behavior has been so normalized and because there's a concerted effort to not report on every little thing he says he gets away with so much just like the permissive structure around these individuals and the fact that like there is no bottom where it's like people don't even fully recognize how bad it is getting until it's reached a point of no return i remember being in summer camp jewish summer camp and like my friend's ipod because he had pink friday on his ipod and i didn't have it and like i wanted to listen to fly with rihanna which is such a good song also really random detail i went to the same jewish summer camp as noah schnapp at the same time which like it's just so random shout out shout out to the jewish summer camps in the northeast i would like to give a shout out to factor for sponsoring today's episode my mother continues to lament to me that despite the thousands of hours i spent watching her cook as a child i never developed the itch to cook and i have continued to tell her mom i love you i do a lot of other things and cooking is just not one of them it is not a moral judgment maybe one day i will like to cook it's just not how i currently express myself and that day has not come but i do love eating and prepared foods and it's been a long time since i've had a meal in a long time and it's been a long time since i've had a meal in a long time dishes and there are new meals being added every week so you don't have to worry about it getting monotonous i'm not much of a meal prepper either i know this just sounds like i'm like a pathetic person who doesn't like doing anything with food but like if factor exists then why do i have to you know if you would like to make eating at home a more varied and less laborious experience you can try factor now you can do that by heading over to factormeals.com slash fruity 50 off with the code fruity 50 off 50 off your first box and free breakfast for the next year that is factormeals.com slash fruity 50 off for 50 off your first box and free breakfast for a year thanks so much to factor and now let's get back to the episode it is here that i also want to address nikki's relationship to the lgbtq community because that's come up in the days since she appeared on turning points speaking circuit with erica kirk and sort of attempting to parrot the transphobic talking points and a lot of people have said that she she never earned the lgbtq icon status that she was given and i actually have mixed feelings on that because while it's true that she hasn't really ever done like outreach to the lgbtq community she hasn't she hasn't done like you know like what madonna did during aids like stuff like that really explicit or like how like gaga did the born this way there's a number of lgbtq icon type celebrities who also never did that like to me britney spears comes to mind and i and i would die for britney everyone knows this not until later in britney's career did she start like explicitly acknowledging you know her queer fans and stuff like that i think nikki and her art just like spoke to us in a certain way and for me it was actually very adjacent to lady gaga because they both came up around the same time doing something similar which was being like super avant-garde super weird with like the voices and the alter egos and even just like hearing a woman dressed like barbie rap about being a king and like slaying goliath and and sort of over the top femme camp aesthetics like i just remember it really spoke to me ole do you have any lgbtq thoughts the priest to me i think with respect to that i there have been several women rappers not just nikki minaj but there have been several of them that do a thing where they they perform they almost perform bisexuality for the male gaze and leave it completely at that nikki minaj is one of them like in her name like initially they used to be these kind of references that suggest you like to be a man or a woman but then all of a sudden it was no affirmatively explicitly not am i right i've left that behind i don't know what you're talking about i think nikki minaj and is probably just a cautionary tale in a lot of different respects but in this one that like maybe we shouldn't be so hasty to give people like their flowers as like assuming that they they have a solidarity with this community or or or um an ally ship just because they appeal to that community nikki minaj is someone who's always despite her nasty attitude that we can see and that you hear about in the industry she's always been like save the pleasantness for her fans but that is about capitalism that is about making money and that and i'm not saying that like as a as a negative to her that's what you're gonna do go be nice to your fans you should be right but she's being nice to her fans and they just so happen to be many of them are in the lgbt community but if you listen to the that comes out our mouth it's it's clear that she don't she don't rock like none at all you know there was actually recently she was doing like a live with her fans and one of them came on that's like come on before that she's spoken to comes on and she's like oh hey babe it's like real sweet and she's like oh what's going on like oh i've been really down lately and she's like oh why and she's like oh well you know it's been really hard forever like this just this trump administration this administration isn't doesn't feel good about like the gays isn't treated as good like it's hard for us right now nikki mazaz was like basically i should have known he was coming with this bullshit mute their mic test them off so i said i have to say i think the lesson here is we we should maybe not be so quick to embrace people because they appeal to us i used to like the baby and then i found out baby don't like us too too much there was a guy who i had an internship with like probably over a decade ago now who as long as i've ever followed him online he has been a barb before all else like initial like first identity barb then like gay then like entertainment journalist and i have watched him defend nikki for years and this past week actually he announced he was like indefinitely leaving social media and i'm like this is because of this he didn't say it's because of what nikki's been doing but i'm like this is exactly why this is happening that cognitive dissonance that has been built up and up and up it's like splintering now in 2012 we get our first big political statement from nikki minaj which is through her her verse in lil wayne's song mercy where she says i'm a republican voting for mitt romney you lazy bitches is fucking up the economy no i did not know this existed really i did not know this existed oh i heard it when it dropped i mean is you so shocked like how did you get away with this well because it's not even it's not even like a good lyric it's just her saying i am a republican voting for mitt romney like it's just so and then obama during that campaign cycle went on a radio show and said that he didn't believe her and that it must have been one of her alter egos speaking because at this point nikki minaj through her art has developed all of these alter egos one of them being roman who is described in some places as a gay man and then nikki minaj tweets in response to obama ha thank you for understanding my creative humor and sarcasm mr president the smart ones always do sending love and support at barack obama i think this is such an interesting moment because it really is for a lot of nikki minaj's career hard to know which parts of her are like you're meant to take seriously because she has all these characters that sometimes she says things that are serious but then regrets them and then retroactively like says oh well that was an alter ego it makes the whole thing very difficult to parse out there's a really strong parallel here for me to tricia payne and i think it's a really strong parallel here for me to tricia payne and i think it's a really strong parallel here for me to tricia payne and i think it's a really strong parallel here for me to tricia payne and i think it's a really strong parallel here for me to tricia payne I'm sure I'm sure there is Kat particularly because at around the exact same time Trisha Paytas made a video that was like I'm voting for Mitt Romney and I'm not saying you know be a conservative Republican like me um because I don't push my beliefs on people yeah so I wanted to make my official video slash support for Romney Ryan 2012 so basically one Mitt Romney is super hot Barack Obama did not care about Trisha Paytas because at this point in time there would be no reason for any politician to be commenting on what she was up to on YouTube but it's like it's the exact same kind of effect where there's a built-in defense when these people who embrace these types of characters and this type of like trolling because it's like as a fan you can then decide like what I interpret as real and what I interpret as fake in 2014 Nikki releases her third album the pink print at this point she has for years been one of music's biggest superstars and in 2015 we are now at the run-up to the 2016 election Nikki appears on the cover of billboard and in her cover star interview they ask her about the election question you're from New York so you also must have an opinion on Donald Trump Ole do you want to read the response there are points that he has made that may not have been so horrible if his approach wasn't so childish but in terms of entertainment I think he's hilarious I wish they could just film him running for president that's the ultimate reality show this all it is to me is a reflection of what I was saying earlier about being unprincipled like the reality is this whether or not she tries to pin it on the alter ego like do we know whether or not she's being serious when she says oh I'm voting for Mitt Romney I'm a Republican this is how I see it if you are a person that understands politics you are a black person in this world a that understands the stakes that come with an election who understood what the Republicans are and why it's dangerous for the Republicans to have power there's no way you would be playing games with your influence in your platform and and then the possibility for people to be influenced to not understand so the fact in and of itself that it doesn't matter enough to you to be definitive to to stay out of something if you're not going to be serious that in and of itself tells me how you feel because it's one of those things like I don't need you to in your heart believe all the things of the oppressed I just need you to make way for it and that's I see people who are unprincipled who don't care one way or the next who don't like recognize the stakes who just do foolishness that's how I feel about like when Kanye West says he's running for president whether or not he really is and what he's doing whether he's kind of the fact alone that you're doing this kind of fucking bullshit when the stakes are so fucking high tells me everything so I've been thought Nikki was full of shit and all my dislike for Nikki I never thought she was this actually I dislike Nikki for being somebody who is um um like I said a harbinger of misogyny somebody who is helping who is helping reinforce a system that discriminates against women because she would like to be the exception she wants to be the token and I think that is horrible and that's what I didn't like but that that is limited in scope you know what I mean like being a misogyny you can be a regular run-of-the-mill hating ass bitch who only wants you to be successful and not be a fascist propagandist like at no point did I think one day that bitch Nikki might come out and try and help manufacture consent for genocide in the first place and I don't think she's going to be able to do that I don't think she's going to be able to do that I don't think she's going to be able to do that I don't think she's going to be able to do that I don't think she's going to be able to do that I don't think she's going to be able to do that I don't think she's going to be able to do that I don't think she's going to be able to do that when people make these statements where they're kind of starting off by saying like well Trump maybe has some points but it's like it's the way that he says it that's so immature and childish that that's the problem that to me is like such a massive red flag because I'm like what points do you think he has like what exactly is Trump right about it comes back to this idea that she and anyone who speaks like this is deeply unprincipled because I'm like the fact that you think that there is something underneath like the layers of Trump that is good when there's actually nothing like obviously like he has no good ideas he has no redeeming beliefs so now you've opened up this pathway where it's like I understand how she went from saying this in 2015 to a decade later like fully supporting and endorsing him because there was never anything to support about him but she always left that door open Trump obviously gets elected in 2016 November 2016 Nicki Minaj comes out with Black Barbies which is a song that I loved and in that she has the lyric island girl Donald Trump want me go home I I don't know at the time I just remember thinking like oh that was just such a clean diss of Trump's anti-immigration policies at the time I don't really know if there's anything to add about that it just seemed like I don't know the cultural tide at the time was very anti-Trump right after his first election that's what I was gonna say it's a reflection of convenient it's like the times yes and it's like if you're operating from the perspective of either a Barb or someone who is like of two minds about Nicki at this point when she says things like this you're like oh okay maybe the comment on the radio show was just a fluke all she has to do is kind of drop these breadcrumbs of like oh I actually don't know anti-Trump oh I am actually pro-gay and that creates like almost like a justification for people to maybe think like she's not as bad as it actually seems she's aligning herself with power it's very simple and that's what she made her comment about Mitt Romney and then when Obama becomes is popular and likable and addresses something and doesn't outright diss her and people like her then she leans into let me be cute with that on Twitter the same way she's always been trying to be cute with the Republican politicians all over Twitter and stuff now because that's who is who's in power that's all it is and so she throws out her one little her one little something because she knows people eat up fucking breadcrumbs like oh they want to send me home because everybody was anti-Trump in 2016 but in 2025 when the Republicans are moving where it's a fucking regime not an administration then you see her fucking breaking her fucking ankles to try to any any little she's salivating any random fucking Joe Schmo Republican can speak on Twitter and she replying oh blah blah blah she wants to be she wants to be aligned with power and that's for her own gains that's all it is here is where we have to talk about Nikki's brother Jelani Nikki has an older brother named Jelani he's five years older than her and you may have seen this coming but huge trigger warning for like the basically the rest of the episode for sexual assault pedophilia all of this stuff because uh it hits Nikki's life hard in 2017 Jelani who was then 38 was found guilty of sexually assaulting a child younger than 13 shortly after Jelani's arrest Nikki paid his hundred thousand dollar bail she also posted a family photo at the time on Instagram seemingly in support of her brother meanwhile in the case prosecutors alleged that Jelani had started abusing this girl when she was 11 and raped her while her mom was at work this occurred repeatedly between 2014 and 2015 so Jelani was around 35 at the time Nikki's and Jelani's mother Carol as well as Jelani's lawyers accused the girl and her mom of trying to get money out of Nikki's family the girl's brother who was 10 at the time testified as a witness to the abuse but didn't say anything at the time because he was scared CPS would remove their mother from the house Jelani ended up being found guilty and is serving 25 to life I know some of the details in there are really hard to hear but I do think that sometimes these celebrity stories of sexual abuse get repeated so often online that they just kind of get turned into memes and it's like oh Nikki Nikki defends pedophiles in her family Nikki this we see that happening a lot with Epstein and I think it's so important to just highlight that like at the heart of these stories are victims and with that said let's talk about Nikki's husband because he's a huge part of this story as well I will say in 2018 Nikki Minaj is continuing to criticize Trump's family separation policy she posts a photo at this point of a migrant detention center with the caption quote I came to this country as an illegal immigrant I can't imagine the horror of being in a strange place and having my parents stripped from me at the age of five this is so scary to me please stop this can you try to imagine the terror and panic these kids feel right now not knowing if their parents are dead or alive if they'll ever see them again yes it's just interesting to me that all of this stuff is still happening and happening again and happening in ways ever more brutal and I guess Nikki doesn't care anymore but anyway also in 2018 Nikki reconnects with her now husband Kenneth Petty Kenneth Petty and Nikki went to high school together in Queens and they reconnect all these years later after Kenneth has served two prison sentences one for four years for being convicted of attempted rape in 1994 and another for seven years for manslaughter in 2006 they get married in 2019 they have one son together big papa the details of the 1994 rape were that Kenneth Petty and the alleged victim Jennifer Huff were both 16 he held her at knife point while she was walking to school took her to a nearby house and assaulted her Kenneth initially denied the first degree rape allegations then pled guilty to the lesser charge of attempted first degree rape and like I said spent four years in prison this is what I'll say about this and I'm going to look at this in the like most favorable to Nikki and be as nuanced as possible as somebody who was a defense attorney and an abolitionist I think it is the general claim that Nikki is somebody that aligns with abusers is true I think what counts as evidence towards that is it's important where we make the differentiations I don't think there's anything inherently wrong about Nikki Minaj paying the bail for her brother so her brother can battle a case from the outside I don't think it inherently means in in in paying his bail without anything further I don't think it inherently means that she is defending an abuser or that's what what's going on here I think you can think and it's happened a lot of times a lot of people don't think that Nikki is a abuser and that's what's going on here I think you can think and it's happened a lot of times a lot of people are family and loved ones who support them or still love them while they are battling or battling a case or maybe even battling their innocence or whatever have you and it isn't about them trying to vilify their victims or defend them or anything like that I think that there can be multiple different things happening in the same respect that I don't inherently kick Nikki's back in for marrying somebody who is who is previously incarcerated or for rape and for a manslaughter it's not inherently that I think there are arguments that can be made and abolitionist arguments that are to be made about accountability and atonement and going through the system and xyz I think there are different things to be made what makes Nikki a problem is it's one thing to pay bail for your brother right it's one thing to pay bail for your brother it's one thing to have a husband or as a previous criminal record what takes Nikki over the edge is that Nikki is even in her own personal professional life you'll see different artists like r69 or the game or it almost feels like the minute someone is accused of something like that it's then that Nikki pops out to be the one person to be to be there for them to be on their side I could understand Nikki Menard saying Kenneth Penny was convicted for something when he was a young teenager that he did something horrible and he served his time and he's told that's an entirely different thing for harassing his victim I want to be clear because I think it could be it can be dangerous when we um we think it is but it's not the progressive position um in actualities that anybody who's been who's been in the criminal system is to be treated as you know irredeemable or whatever have you all across the board or that they could never they shouldn't be a part of society they're not deserving of love they can't be married again have kids again all these different things so I think that like that's a different argument and I want to make sure I step away from that that is not inherently my problem like why Nikki Minaj has to marry somebody with no it's not that it's the extra stuff that proves this the extra everything that she has to say like I said what she lets us know she thinks about their victim I do think Nikki Minaj is somebody who absolutely defends and aligns herself with abuse and abusers but I just wanted to be clear as to why and then I'm not drawing this that just demonizes and vilifies anybody that's been convicted or previously incarcerated for small or horrible heinous crimes there was a 2021 lawsuit filed by Jennifer Huff the victim in that case years and years and years later for 15 million dollars against Kenneth Petty and Nikki Minaj for harassment and attempting to intimidate her into recanting her 1994 testimony Jennifer alleged that Nikki and Kenneth would bombard her and her family with phone calls unexpected visits to their homes and with bribes allegedly up to five hundred thousand dollars for her to recant her allegations and then this legal saga continues when in 2023 Kenneth and Nikki moved from New York to LA where Kenneth does not immediately register as a sex offender in California so he's charged with violating the terms of his probation and sentenced to 120 days of house arrest Nikki has defended this relationship strenuously she said on Queen Radio which is her radio show I didn't know that in our society you have to be plagued by your past I didn't know that people can't turn over a new leaf I didn't know that your viciousness and evilness was this deep-rooted this deep-seated and like Ole said I'm also someone who believes in like rehabilitative justice and like I agree with what she's saying there but she she also isn't just saying that she's harassing her and she's not just saying that she's harassing her husband's accuser exactly there's nuance to be had but it would be reasonable if she were operating in good faith but she's not and something that I think about with regards to the cycle of abuse victim psychology and sort of Nikki's evolving political leanings around the same time that she's aligning with these abusers in the music industry and sort of defending and engaging in these harassment of victims related to her family I think about how there's sort of this expectation that people have of her and I think about how there's sort of this expectation that people have that if someone themselves is abused or grows up in like an abusive household as Nikki has talked about that you will then for the rest of your life operate from the perspective of being like victim-centered and that you will take things like abuse more seriously and that you will take the side of victims over perpetrators because it's something that you yourself went through but the unfortunate reality is a lot of times victims and people who are sort of bystanders to abuse develop the opposite sort of ideology and perspective and so I think that's something I think that's something that I think that's something that I think a lot of people don't think about a lot of people don't think about a lot of people don't think about a lot of people don't think about a lot of people don't think about a lot of people don't think about a lot of people and the reason that this is is because these cases and how abusers and victims are treated does not happen in a vacuum a majority of times people are not held accountable and this reminds me of sort of what Cardi B was talking about in that tweet where she was like Nikki you were not protected as a child and you did not receive justice and so now today you are sort of repeating this cycle against other people you see that in a lot a lot of cases if you see power and abuse of power be enabled and rewarded and you go through that process yourself in order to rationalize that and sort of move on from that oftentimes people internalize that sort of logic of abuse where it's like actually the person in power is right and the victims are wrong and that can be sort of an internal thing where you view yourself as in the wrong and so then you like with you into other situations and it can also apply more broadly to society and I think a lot of times like conservative rhetoric sort of is this logic of abuse where it's like people who have power in situations who abuse their powers in situations should be enabled they should have like the advantage here there's a direct parallel here to Trump and to Epstein and to all of these things that we see happening at like this macro societal level where it's like this logic that enables abuse also facilitates and enables conservative ideology like they go hand in hand and oftentimes are one in the same that to me like speaks to I think a lot of the way that Nicki Minaj carries herself and why the things that she went through perhaps in her own childhood and also the way she was treated in the music industry she's now repeating that cycle and doing it to other people because she has yet to sort of internalize or externalize that it was wrong she's not really seeking justice she's not seeking justice she's not seeking justice she's not seeking justice in these situations she's just repeating the exact same cycles of harm and abuse that happened to her one of the things that really turned me off from Nicki Minaj where I sort of like drew my own line in the sand and was like I don't even really want to do this anymore I don't want to do this anymore want to listen to this woman's music anymore because i can no longer stand her as a person was her association with six nine wait can you explain as like i i almost exclusively listen to pop music so you gotta you gotta help me out here six nine is a rapper who around this time uh was doing like really highly charting music with nikki minaj she was she did trolls with him i was gonna say didn't they do the troll song together six nine has had a lot of different legal issues but one of the things that really bothered me was that in 2015 he pled guilty and i'm reading directly from the wikipedia description here he pled guilty to a felony count of use of a child in a sexual performance so he had this video involving this 13 year old girl that was distributed online and it was part of a music video and i um i remember reading about this incident being so disturbed seeing that nikki minaj was like working with him at the same time and being like this to me really like has shaken like my perception of her like i kind of think this is my personal breaking point but what's interesting about this as well is that six nine is still accepted broadly in our culture today i'm home for the holidays and my brother put on the jake paul fight on netflix when jake paul came out into the stadium he was literally with six nine i mean fork found in kitchen but yeah but it's like this is on netflix like people aren't really talking about this people aren't really like condemning this or even taking notice of this and that's because we live in a culture that enables and rewards this behavior there's any consolation six nine is broke right now like i had to bankrupt all these things sell all this shit like he is down the fuck back like fully fully ain't nobody fucking with six crumbs of justice crumbs of justice we exist in this culture that rewards and enables this cycle of violence nikki minaj again she's not operating or making these decisions in a vacuum she's responding and engaging with like the exact same incentive structure that exists more broadly in our culture and so that's not an excuse or justification for anything that she does it's just like it occurs to me that like she is doing what essentially society is encouraging her to do yeah yeah yeah absolutely right cat like she's convinced herself she's convinced herself that the victims are wrong and the people who are doing the abuse are on the right but in addition to that she's also hoping to protect herself she's also hoping to protect herself she's hoping to protect herself she's trying to keep herself safe and she's she's convinced herself that this is inevitable but there is the token you know charles eric bell talks about this in faces at the bottom of the well and he talks about rules of racial racial stamina she thinks okay if i'm in the if i'm in the music industry that treats with women like this and sees women like this i'm going to be the woman that parrots what they're saying so they'll protect me and fuck them it's the same thing she's doing now it's like okay donald trump and number of power whatever i'm gonna be the one to get up there and say all this about black women say all this about this group say all this to say say what y'all want to hear so you protect me while everybody else is in danger it's it's it's a foolishly short-sighted um defense mechanism but it's one that we've seen the humanage employ in every situation she's always going to be the one to speak against the interests of the group that she is actually a part of because she thinks that the majority will protect her if she aligns with them this episode is also sponsored by our longtime friends over at rocket money the cost of done anything to bring it down. 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Like I could recite it in my sleep, but nonetheless, my cousin in Trinidad won't get the vaccine because his friend got it and became impotent. His testicles became swollen. His friend was weeks away from getting married. Now the girl has called off the wedding. So just pray on it and make sure you're comfortable with your decision, not believe. This was basically an explanation of why she wouldn't be at the Met Gala the following day because she wasn't vaccinated and there was a vaccination requirement. Now, this was the tweet heard around the world. My, like in hindsight, wasn't the cousin, her cousin's friend in Trinidad, like, wasn't he just, didn't he just get chlamydia? Isn't that because like his balls got swollen and he became impotent so his wife left him? It's not making, none of this is making sense. The, I do think the real explanation is that he's not going to get the vaccine. He's going to get the vaccine. The real explanation here is that her cousin's friend, who never gets identified, by the way, cheated on his fiance, got chlamydia. Because he got chlamydia, the wife finds out and then leaves it. Like, isn't that the most plausible explanation? Tell me if I'm wrong. The most plausible explanation is that Nicki Minaj be doing substances and talking shit on Twitter. There's no, there's no evidence that she didn't pull all of this out of her ass. Like, is any part of this sound real? Like, why would this even be? Let me ask you, what Caribbean man do you know would volunteer to anybody that he can't get his dick up so his wife leave him? Let alone volunteer it to somebody that might tell it to a rap superstar who might tweet it. I agree. It makes no sense at all. And it strikes me as like part of a pattern of like, okay, she's getting heat because she didn't go to the Met Gala. Rather than say like, it's because I refuse to get vaccinated. She concocts this like wild story to sort of like shift the blame shift the attention. I mean, it worked. It worked because this became such a massive like meme. And even people who like don't pay attention to Nicki Minaj at all. We're like taking note of this. And it just became like such a pivotal moment in pop culture at this point in time. This was during like the height of like the vaccination wars, let's say. And I remember like Tucker Carlson being on Fox News, like Nicki Minaj is one of us. Officials in Trinidad, the health ministry in Trinidad investigated this claim. They were like, who is Nicki Minaj's cousin's friend? They ended up releasing public statements saying that they quote, wasted so much time trying to confirm Nicki Minaj's comments about the COVID jab. The White House got on the phone with Nicki Minaj to discuss like why the government officials from multiple countries got involved as a result of this one tweet. But I think it just speaks to her influence, right? It speaks to how much attention we give coked out Twitter rants. You see what I'm saying? Like this is what this, that's what this is. Like you don't listen to, if you see a crazy person on the road raving and ranting, you don't, you don't ask yourself, I wonder what they mean. Like you don't, you don't try to make sense of it. But that's what people do with Nicki Minaj. And it doesn't make sense because look at the words that I'm pretending could have come from somewhere legitimate. My cousin in Trinidad won't get the vaccine because his friend got it and became impotent. And we over here, maybe her cousin, maybe the cousin friend don't exist. They don't exist. None of it's real. Nicki Minaj would be talking fuck. Nicki Minaj would double down on her anti-vax politics in December of 2023. She said, every time I talk about politics, people get mad. I'm sorry, but I am not going to be told who I should get on social media and campaign for. There's a lot we don't know that's going on in the government. And I don't think it changes whether you lean to the left or the right. I don't know. I just think the whole vaccine thing, to your point, it was so absurd, but she also got a lot of backlash for it. And one thing that I think becomes extremely visible about Nicki Minaj for here on out is that she just does not know how to deal with backlash. And she always, as many people do politically, especially. celebrities and you know people like jk rowling come to mind she pushes herself deeper into what she already thinks and already says no matter how unfounded it is no matter how wrong it is no matter how hurtful it is because people telling her that she's wrong reinforces her belief that she's right i feel like we've seen this kind of it's not like so much of a shift in that i think a lot of celebrities have felt this way and a lot of people have like felt this way for a long time and behaved this way but there's much more transparency and sort of pride i feel like in that perspective in celebrity culture now in a like post-2020 era than i feel like we had before it's also interesting to me that during these years the latter 2010s and the early 2020s the landscape of female rap is really rapidly changing in a way that clearly threatens nikki who for her whole career has identified as female raps not for her own good and not for her own good and not for her own good and not for her own good and rightfully so from the beginning but by the early 20s cardi b is a similarly statued rival megan the stallion has blown up doja cat lotto sweetie ice spice flow millie glorilla all these women finding their own success in a way that makes nikki insecure i think it's interesting that she goes through some version of this like mid-career crisis that a lot of entertainers who make the maga pivot go through no you're right but she's only in crisis because because of that like again it's a gatekeeper mindset like she never stopped being successful she's actually she's actually been able to be successful and have a sustained amount of relevance and legitimacy longer than most ever have but that's the problem with when you are greedy and selfish and you want it to only be you you can never have enough if you think you're supposed to have everything and nikki minaj has made it very clear that she does not want or like other women in rap to have a mark not even just other women in rap she was talking shit about scissor the other day she does not like women period to have a modicum of success so she'll never be happy nikki minaj thinks that she's supposed to have it all and there's just nothing you can do about a person like that you can have a bottomless pit of ambition i i suffer from that you can also even be an egomaniac and make it but you still have to be realistic like for example 50 cent is an egomaniac with a lot of ambition who's an unpleasant person but 50 cent has managed to be really successful because he has a lot of ambition and a lot of ambition and a lot of ambition and a lot of he clues into reality like 50 cent has a book um hustle harder hustle smarter i've read it he talks about in there like 50 cent too wanted to dominate rap and dominate hip-hop all these things and he did for a long time and he said and then he realized like hey listen hip-hop is a young man's sport like i realized i was going to venues and realized this is not the same as what it was they're not responding to me here the way that they were and i realized like oh shit if i still want to be who i want to be i still want to be a big thing i still want to make money i want to do this like i can still do that i can still have a lot of ambition and i still want to be a big thing like more ambitions and visions but i have to pivot in some way nikki minaj does not is not a person who wants to change with times or adapt she doesn't want to adapt she she expects and demands that the world adapts to her and it doesn't work like that and when it doesn't she just continues to lash out and lash out and lash out and lash out year after year after year yeah and she definitely also struggles as so many celebrities do so many celebrities who end up going right do with conflating all criticism as hate and and i think this is especially unfortunate because nikki minaj struggled so much as we've identified especially early in her career with like so much sexism so much racism misogynoir i think something that she does is like when she gets flack for example for this lawsuit of harassing the victims of her family members who are sexual abusers she i think compartmentalizes that with all of the actual like bigoted hate that she's received and puts her in a position all under this umbrella of like well everyone's out to get me she just becomes it's almost like a broken machine unable to process any sort of criticism and there is no better example of this happening than her beef with megan the stallion which could be its own series of seven episodes and i know we've already been recording for like two hours but do we want to just very quickly touch on what happened with megan the stallion it's following like a very similar similar formula to some of what we've already talked about nikki hated cardi nikki and cardi were at each other's throats after megan collabed with cardi this is when things went really really south of her relationship with nikki then you have kind of the back and forth through the music where megan releases hiss which is an amazing song well before hiss important to mention you gotta remember um red ruby the sleeves nikki minaj was dissing her calling her a horse and making jokes about the torii lane shooting her hiss is a response to at least two episodes of megan the stallion which is like two years of nikki minaj talking openly talking shit about megan the stallion every time she got and like hiss is significantly more subtle than i think what nikki had been doing to megan but after hiss that's when nikki releases the ai generated monstrosity megan the stallion said these hoes don't be mad at megan these hoes mad at megan's law do you want to explain what megan's law is in megan's law is the law that requires sex offenders to be registered and as you know nikki minaj's husband is not only a sex offender he was also recently convicted for not registering as a sex offender when he moved to california and nikki minaj married to a man under said jurisdiction as a as a registered sex offender was shot to the chest personally offended upset and crashed the fuck out on twitter for like i don't even know how long it was it was 40 days and 49 she was crashing the fuck out just like she always does it was disgusting like go listen to the song i think this is an important point too because i don't know how long it was it was 40 days and 49 she was crashing the fuck out everybody always feels the need whenever anyone anyone criticizes nikki minaj anybody you could be the biggest nikki minaj hater and everybody feels the need to give her her flowers like oh you know nikki is talented nikki is this nikki was that but let's let's let's start to talk about the fall off completely because it's not just it hasn't just been a fall off of of mental stability or or a principle or anything like that did you hear that bullshit diss track the music ain't been it either chief so not only is it moral bankruptcy but it's also a fall off of also garbage because i'll bop to some moral bankruptcy if it's a banger all right a banger it was not megan the stallion just recently won a defamation lawsuit against a blogger named milagro grams who had been going after her who tweeted ai generated like deep fakes of megan the stallion milagro was a nikki minaj stand like milagro was a barb so not only is nikki attacking megan in this way but she has her fandom getting involved in it too you see the way in which like the behavior that nikki is engaging in is both like enabled and echoed by this fan base that she has developed that she has egged on and encouraged to do this like anti-social harassment so fast forward one more year november 2025 just last month nikki shared a white house tiktok touting trump's achievements including quote no men in women's sports and making cities safer which was just a reference to the white house tiktok and the white house reference to the deployment of the national guard and then nikki applauds trump for his outspokenness in the supposed christian genocide that is supposedly taking place in nigeria she took a screenshot of a of donald trump's truth social post about the christian persecution in nigeria and she tweeted reading this made me feel a deep sense of gratitude we live in a country where we can freely worship god and she goes on and then and this was all in the span of a few days accepted an invitation to speak at the united nations on behalf of the trump administration about the importance of fighting christian persecution in nigeria now i was really shocked by this happening and by how little it was discussed at the time and i also didn't totally know how to talk about it because i up until this point was not able to talk about it because i was not able to talk about it because i was not able to really privy to nigerian religious extremist paramilitary violence like that's just not something i knew that much about so i didn't want to like speak out of turn but ole i know you know a lot about this so can you explain to people what this is all about i will say i wouldn't i would not qualify myself but myself as somebody who knows a lot about it but i do have the basic understanding that everybody could and should have on the issue so it is long time um conservative propaganda conservative evangelical propaganda that they've been doing where they've been saying that there is a genocide happening to christians in nigeria that is not true let me tell you what's happening there is violence happening in nigeria there is extremist extremism happening christians are dying but they're not dying for being christian and they are not the majority of who's dying or the targets or being targeted for being christian boko haram is a terrorist extremist group that actually mostly targets muslims because they are fundamentalist muslims who want like the strictest version of islam to be in in in practice and so they target like specifically muslims that they feel like are open or sympathetic to western this or anything you're too soft for them so mostly who do they're going after are muslims that's who the majority of the victims are but conservatives and and have been positioning and intentionally propagandizing it as christians are being genocided because they know that one they are playing on the road christians than anybody else and that is i want to say that that is a fundamental like important thing that has to be recognized the outright implication that those lives don't matter at all. They're Muslims or who are being killed in droves and that doesn't matter. Nicki Minaj, Donald Trump, what they're saying is we will defend Christians. We will defend Christian lives. It doesn't matter all these other lives lost, but regardless, it doesn't matter about any of that at all. All this is, is Trump and the Republicans trying to manufacture consent for people to support them invading Nigeria. You hear what I'm saying? We're going to go in there, guns a blazing. And that in and of itself is unfortunate that even if it was what they're trying to pretend it to be, the idea that that would just automatically give America authority, unilateral authority to invade Nigeria, invade Africa and kill who they want in and of itself. And I think that's important because you don't hear anybody saying that. I have not heard anybody recognize that even if it was what Nicki Minaj and them were saying, that would not give the United States government justification to think they could go into Nigeria, guns a blazing. But that is what Nicki Minaj is about. She's applauding. That's what she is suggesting. And that's not what's happening. And that is just another excuse for them to go in Africa. Not only because Nigeria is a huge country with some of the biggest oil gas reserves in the world, but on top of that, what having a foothold in Nigeria would mean for their power in the rest of the region. So this is just a power grab that would actually end up with people dead. So I say, I would say Nicki Minaj is full of shit. She's a fascist. She's a fascist propagandist. And I think this is worse than anything she's ever done because so far the things that Nikki's done, Nikki has caused real and material harm. The things like what her husband has done, what she's alleged to have done and harassing his victim and all of that. Nikki has harmed people in the industry or women dealing with her. But what Nikki's doing now goes way beyond us having moral objections to it or not seeing ourselves in our wishing she didn't act like that or anything like that. What she's doing now is quite literally potentially endangering countless people. She is helping a fascist white supremacist regime justify being able to go and murder African people under whatever justification. So that to me is like, you got to hang Nicki Minaj up. There should be no more defenses of Nicki Minaj in 2020 fucking six. Thank you so much for explaining that so succinctly. Also, because like when I saw that, I'm like, I don't really understand this, but it's like if there's religious persecution, violent religious persecution anywhere, it's like you know, as a as a progressive person, you want to stand against that. But also like, the concept of Trump and Trump's administration spearheading in overseas, you know, human rights issue, when they are conducting a genocide in Gaza, when they refuse to recognize the Armenian genocide. It's like, I'm like, something has to be fishy here. Because this is this is an administration known best for how little they care about human rights abuses. So that makes a lot more sense. One of her gay fans on Twitter, replied to all of this activity at the time and said, Nikki, as a diehard fan who genuinely sticks beside you through every single scandal, you cozying up to this fucking loser, meaning Trump, I might actually have to tap out. Your gay fans are so disappointed, etc, etc. And then Nikki replies, imagine hearing that Christians are being murdered and making it about you being gay. When my home was swatted multiple times with my innocent toddler inside, with maybe 20 officers with guns drawn pointed at our home due to political corruption. You being gay couldn't save me. Crazy. She just said, imagine hearing that Christians are being murdered and making it about you being gay. But somebody telling you about what they're experiencing being gay, and she made it about she got squatted in the house. This cuts directly to the actual issue going on here. Because you have to wonder, right? Like, I have wondered so many times over the last two months, why has Nicki Minaj suddenly just got so interested in right wing politics? Could it be that she's actually just taken on like a genuine interest and and fervor for right wing politics? Maybe. But she gives away the game a little bit when she seamlessly goes from apparently I care about Christian persecution in Nigeria. But also I want to talk about the political corruption that led officers to swat my mansion in California. Okay, now we're getting to what's actually going on. And I'm going to talk about the political corruption that led officers to swat my mansion in California. here. So Nicki Minaj continues throughout November and December to feud with the California governor, Gavin Newsom. Remember, Nicki Minaj lives in California. Gavin Newsom went on Ezra Klein's podcast recently, he said that he would like to see trans kids in the sense that like he would like to see trans kids grow up. Listeners of this podcast know that I will be very hard pressed to go out of my way to defend Ezra Klein or Gavin Newsom. But this was a pretty innocuous statement. To which Nicki replies on Twitter, imagine being the guy running on wanting to see trans kids. Haha, not even a trans adult would run on that normal adults wake up and think they want to see healthy, safe, happy kids. So again, now we're doing the transphobic talking points. And I'm just wondering, what is going on here? And I'm still at this point pretty confused because I'm like, why does Nicki have it out for Gavin Newsom? And I'm like, why does he have it out for Gavin Newsom? And it goes back to that little blip that she couldn't resist tweeting out about her getting swatted. So Nicki Minaj's house has been swatted, which is basically when for no good reason, people, strangers, oftentimes strangers on the internet stands to call the police to come to your house. It's become more of like a looser term, but it originates from basically like claiming that there's an active hostage situation at someone's house like filing false reports so that team will show up. So Nicki's house in Hidden Hills, California has been swatted a whole number of times, including times where she was home with her then infant child. Now, this is horrible. Swatting is traumatic. I've read so many stories from celebrities and child stars who have been swatted. And it seems truly terrible. But this seems like the product of deranged stands more than like corruption from the California police. And I'm like, why is this happening? And I'm like, California government and it seems like she's pinning the trauma of being swatted on Gavin Newsom and the fact that like he didn't do anything to stop it. I think she is pinning who didn't do favors for her. I think that's ultimately all that we are seeing is like it's very clear. We've seen based on her nut ass tweets, how her nut ass tweets were taken seriously by the US government, the Trinidadian government. She is somebody who expects government officials, people to stop what they're doing and give her problems air. And it's clear that with Nicki Minaj, they don't, they don't ever tell us the whole picture, but it's clear that whatever situations and problems she finds herself in with her legal and financial troubles she's having with her house, with her husband facing more trouble with him not being able to do this. She feels like the Gavin Newsom is not overextending himself to help her in the way that we see these Republican officials doing it. That's it. And that's all, that's all it's about. She has a politics, she has a grievance politics, and she has that in every capacity. And I think like, it's okay to prostitute and, you know, on time. It's okay to want to be mad, want to be mad about something, want to operate on your own, but it's an entirely different thing from like making that your flagship cause and agenda. You know what I mean? Something that you come into the internet with. And I think, I don't think people have, the Barb's have ever asked of Nicki that she do anything more, but not make it so that she's not indefensible. And I think that's where she is now because her entitlement is that, is that she thinks the fucking governor of California should be checking for her. Like ultimately that's what it boils. Down to is like, no matter what it is you were going through a normal fucking person doesn't think like, you know, who should stop what they doing right now and check on me, the governor. Yes. There's also like, kind of like a level of paranoia and delusion to the way that she's drifting that to me indicates that she's just really lost the plot. And there could be multiple factors like causing that, but regardless, she's drawing all of these connections in things that don't necessarily connect to each other. She's somehow able to take the Trump administration's propaganda around Nigeria and connect that to like, I'm being swatted online. And anyone who's of right mind is not going to connect these things. Like there is, there's a deeper issue also here at this point that she's reached. Totally. And another local grievance, political issue that I think is contributing to this anger towards Gavin Newsom, which has become anger towards Democrats in general, which has led her into the hands of the right is that Nicki Minaj and Kenneth Petty, her husband were sued by a former security guard who says that Kenneth assaulted him backstage in 2019. They were ordered to pay the guard $500,000 and never did. So now currently a California judge is threatening to force the sale of her $20 million home so they can pay that guard. And I think this is another situation where Gavin Newsom, why aren't you doing anything about this? And when you are online and you're a public figure who starts tweeting about how Gavin Newsom is doing X, Y, and Z wrong, the people who will start cheering you on immediately are very online Republicans. And you start following them and you start seeing what they're posting that lands well. And nothing lands better with a lot of these very online right-wingers than transphobia. And here you have this woman through petty grievances. The California government but like not even she's just decided to assign the blame there we have her being fed into the hands of the right where she very quickly like in a matter of like days ascends the ranks and shows up at america fest because it's the easiest thing to do the easiest thing you do you can do is align with power and riff to the right there's literally nothing easier and it's not a hard role to play you just get up and say all the bullshit that you know they want to hear you shit on your people if tomorrow you woke up and said fuck gays come right here matt like you know what i mean i've thought about this so many times oh i've thought about this so many times if i got on this podcast and i got on instagram and i said everything that i've said for the last seven years i realized was wrong and the left is intolerant they're pressuring me to say things that i don't believe in and i'm so afraid that if i say the wrong thing that they're just gonna cast me out and i'm tired of feeling like beholden to the dogma i wonder how fast turning point usa would have me on that street eat that shit not not to get not to have a big head about it but like it's so compelling they love they love it they're like i tried to be liberal but they made it impossible that is their big thing they would fucking if you said they'd be rich tomorrow i mean this is exactly what candace owens did she literally said like overnight i went from being liberal to realizing that conservatives were right all along and look at what she has built for herself because of that and the right has also developed this pipeline where they can take advantage of whether it is a malicious like fully sane decision to go down that path or whether they're like preying on someone who's in a state of like delusional paranoia or whether it's a combination of both they have perfected this pipeline and like you can see how fast they're able to execute on that and get these people up on a stage where the audience has no discernment of what is happening in front of them nikki minaj was a featured speaker at america fest within like weeks of her actually openly embracing the trump administration like they have that shit on lock the only value that they have for marginalized people is to be validation piece for them to point to and say see this that black person said that anti-black they said it's okay that gay person said it that immigrant said it that's all you're there for it's a very easy role to play they will always come come come come they don't like nikki minaj i don't give a fuck about nikki minaj they didn't listen to fucking super bass but they see an opportunity that's all it is they see it they're like oh great a black superstar black rap superstar ready to shill for us beautiful let's invite her in all she needs is a little bit of ego stroking and that's it because that's all she wants out of it and that's what i said it's clear in all her responses all she wants to see who is willing to give her a breadcrumb that's why she goes oh mitt romney oh obama said something nice to me okay mama thank you thank you mama babe you know what i mean oh trump oh you you saying something you saying whatever all of a sudden that's all it's about if gavin newsom had said fuck coddy b and her new album was trash nikki minaj would be here campaigning for him right now it's such a shallow way to engage with politics because it's not even engaging with politics it's just engaging with like ego and and it's such to me it's like it's like an abuse of of power and of of influence yeah it's a politic of grievance your politics are moved based on how what your grievance is and her grievance is about her and so her politics are about her unfortunately it harms more than just her and that's the issue i want to play just two selected clips from this uh america fest appearance she made with erica kirk who just watching these two women try to interact with each other having zero shared lived experience is so funny it was so awkward they didn't have nothing to say her because just like i love her yeah i know what you mean people be trying to judge me too why do you think speaking your mind has become so controversial because people no longer are using their minds their brains so right now just imagine we're not allowed to have a different opinion anymore we're not allowed to think out loud anymore we're not like it just this is not what the world used to feel like and especially for the young people i don't want them growing up in a world where they feel like that i mean they deserve for their voices to be heard they have valid feelings and and they're thinking about things and it and it deserves attention you know we we should we should listen to what they're saying one thing i will say about the right wing grift and one of my least favorite things about it that i've lamented on this podcast many times is that it takes even the most skilled even if you hate someone like nikki minaj jeffree star these are people who at their height like they were so interesting whether you like them or not they were so interesting and it makes these people so boring you are just doing what you can't even have an opinion anymore you're just doing like old man yelling at cloud you sound like bill maher yes oh she just has nothing to say they literally they've gone over that with her like these are questions this is how to answer and she's just trying her best to remember a little bit of what they said like try to recall it and make it sound natural she doesn't she doesn't believe the shit that's coming out of her mouth she's just saying whatever and i think that's i think that's just as bad as believing it and she and she can't even recite it either and i love that they clap regardless when she goes people no longer use their minds that's exactly my dream my auntie when she's drunk is just like that why do you think like people have a problem with people speaking their minds it's so funny because it's a leading question like erica's already like trying to feed her the answer like in the question because it's clear she's struggling to remember the script and still all she came up with was because they're not using their minds and the whole audience still goes crazy for it because all they need is like the vague contours of like cancel culture it's just buzzwords or things approximating buzzwords are enough they like the idea that they think we're upset and so every time she says something they're like they're like it's like pump that into my veins and they think people are angry right now that's the reason why when people are leaving twitter they wanted to go on blue sky they need to be they're not comfortable enough to believe what they want they want attention it's like when you see them post the videos and they put on the maga hats and they're like looking for someone around to say something like it's not enough for them to just be there and enjoy their racist bullshit no that's the whole thing about oppression it needs someone to suffer in their mind they don't give a fuck about mickey minaj what they like is in their mind they're going oh oh i know those fucking local liberals are i know they're fucking mad now you're queen like they're telling themselves all kind of bullshit that we're like foaming at the mouth because mickey's a fool that's why they're excited that's what they're really applauding like yeah a hundred percent they a don't realize that like most people do not care about or like put stock into what mickey minaj says at this point and also like it is so wild that they are doing this victimhood mentality as they control like all three branches of government in the united states there's also a moment in this conversation where erica kirk is like and do you have any advice for boys and mickey minaj she's like well boys will be boys and there's nothing wrong with that for a lot for boys boys be boys amen be boys it's okay be boys it's nothing wrong with being a boy how about that amen how powerful is that how profound is that amen boys will be boys and there's nothing wrong with that um yeah that's what i want to say and you can tell it's like she's trying to vaguely adhere to the transphobic talking point but she doesn't really know it and she's just trying to say whatever she needs to say for the crowd to go wild because that's really i think what she wants out of this you know there's this theory that is going around that mickey minaj's right word shift is an attempt to get trump to pardon her husband i don't fully buy into that first of all the president can't pardon state-level convictions and a legal scholar matt bernstein you're correct but but kenneth petty's attempted rape conviction is a state conviction so there's nothing trump can do about that to me i think her shift can be more explained and this is my thesis through a psychological lens of wanting to be loved without fear of criticism than any strategic or legal lens like on the professional side i think this is someone whose career has stagnated whose art has regressed who identified so closely with the early title of being the only female rapper that she couldn't handle having peers and so she did what so many entertainers in mid-career crises do which is a pivot to the hard right which is a demographic so hungry for mainstream celebrity support that they will adore anything she says or does and there's nothing nikki loves more than adoration. And then on the personal side, this is someone who cannot receive criticism ever and whose inner circle is chock full of people who have committed rape, child rape. She was tired of getting flack for that. So she goes to the place where nobody holds anyone accountable for anything, least of all pedophilia, the American right. Right-wingers will never question her support for her husband or her brother or her harassment of their victims because then they'd have to question their own support for the president who has done all of these things, which is the one thing they're never allowed to do. So she's created a world for herself where she can forever be adored and unchallenged. And the only thing she had to pay for it was her reputation. The thing is, as all tokens learn is that's not true. That's the dream they sell you, but it's not true. You're only useful insofar as you're beneficial and you're only beneficial as when you're parroting their talking points. Every moment and each and every time you do anything else, anything autonomous, the minute you want to actually speak as you, not just repeat their talking points, they're fucking done with you. And they're done with you now because they haven't bought in. They're not going to go support your shit. They're not going to be who buys your music. They're not going to be who keeps you popular. The fucking conservatives there are not trying to dress like Nikita. You're not going to be their influencer. You're not going to be any of that. You're just a fucking talking piece, a token. And just like Herman Cain and Ben Carson and all of them your Omarosa and Stacey Dash and every fucking body else that has pipped themselves out has learned they will have no use for you and then they will discard you. And you'll be left begging for the same communities that you turned your back on to embrace you. And we won't because the music ain't it no more, chief. I think the sad thing is like she may get a momentary boost from this new audience, but it's not actually going to work out in the long run. This is kind of like it for her. This is her grand finale. And what a way to go out. I have a teeny tiny epilogue, which is that a video started circulating after this whole America Fest fiasco with Nicki Minaj of Charlie Kirk at one of his college debate events saying that Nicki Minaj is a bad role model. Right now, black culture is being held captive by influences, songs, which influences? I mean, Nicki Minaj, Cardi B. Okay, Nicki Minaj is causing dads to leave the home. I don't think that's a good role model for 18-year-old black girls. I don't. Now, this is just so entirely predictable. But what makes it really funny to me is that Candace Owens, after Charlie Kirk's death, shared texts that she had exchanged with Charlie, where the two of them were queening out about Nicki's verse on Monster. I'm looking at these texts right now. Charlie sends Candace a screenshot of him listening to Monster. He says, yeah, first things first, I eat your brains with five S's. He goes, when Nicki drops, I lose my mind. Yes, it gets the blood flowing. I'm about to run a few miles jamming to it. And I just love this interaction so much because you know what? It's grifters all the way down. Charlie has no real opinion or worries about whether or not Nicki Minaj is a good role model for people. Charlie loves listening to Nicki Minaj. And for whatever it's worth, I think Charlie would be so proud of what Nicki is doing right now. Not because she's espousing conservative ideals, but because she is grifting off of them. That's my conclusion. Are you done? I usually land on some sort of joke or something. I feel like that was a great final word. Kat and Olay. This was treacherous. Thank you so much for coming on the journey with me. Thank you for having us. Yes, this was fun. I'm really, I am happy for you, Olay, because you've been like a self-identified Nicki hater for a long time. And it's also so hard to feel good about any of this. But it's like, it does feel like the blinders have been taken off. Yes, absolutely. And you know what? We love to see it. We love to see it. It's about time it'd be a safe space for Nicki Minaj haters. If this terrible year could bring us one good thing, it's the fall of the Barbz. Yes, legitimately. Like the Barbz are a terrorist organization that we needed to put a stop to. Where can people find more from each of you? You can subscribe to me at Oloronati. That's my main channel on YouTube, as well as that's my social media handle on Instagram and TikTok and all the places. But on YouTube, Oloronati, I also have Oloronati Pop and Oloronati Bites, has a great video about Nicki Minaj's foolishness with respect to her propaganda about Nigeria and the Trump administration. And I have Olay and Chill. I have Olay and Friends. So subscribe to any of my channels in the Oloronativerse. And then I'm at SpitfireNews.com. And you can also find me at Kat Tembard on Blue Sky and Instagram. And I am Matt Bernstein. And you can find me at A Bit Fruity, the podcast you just listened to. Oh, wait. Hee hee ha ha. No, I'm going to kill that. That was stupid. That was stupid. No, I like it. I am so appreciative that you chose to listen to this episode with us today. It's weird fucking times, but I hope that we can make sense of it together. And go stream Hiss by Megan Thee Stallion. I love you so much. And until next time, stay fruity.

Podcast Summary

Key Points:

  1. Nicki Minaj's appearance at Turning Point USA's America Fest promotes conservative messaging, including anti-leftist and anti-identity-politics rhetoric that aligns with far-right propaganda.
  2. The interview highlights her repeated emphasis on Black women's beauty and a narrative that white women are "made to feel unworthy," which critics argue reflects a manufactured and harmful ideology.
  3. Critics argue that Minaj's public statements, such as her support for Donald Trump and her political alignment with conservative figures, are inconsistent, performative, and based on strategic self-promotion rather than genuine belief.
  4. Her history of feuds with other female rappers like Cardi B and Megan The Stallion reveals a pattern of misogyny and hostility toward women in the industry, contradicting claims of empowerment.
  5. Personal and family history, including her brother’s conviction for child sexual assault and her marriage to a man with a criminal record, raises serious concerns about her alignment with abusive systems.
  6. The analysis suggests Minaj operates within a cycle of abuse and victimization, repeating patterns of defending abusers and normalizing harmful power dynamics.
  7. Her public persona is seen as a tool of political manipulation, appealing to conservative audiences by offering a "token" figure who appears to shift ideologies, despite lacking coherent or principled positions.
  8. Critics argue that the normalization of her actions reflects a broader societal failure to hold powerful figures accountable, especially when they exploit trauma and power to gain influence.

Summary:

The transcript offers a critical examination of Nicki Minaj’s public persona, political statements, and personal history, arguing that her alignment with conservative movements—particularly Turning Point USA—represents a deliberate and problematic strategy to gain influence. Her rhetoric, especially regarding gender and race, is seen as propagandistic, promoting a narrative that downplays white women’s beauty while positioning Black women as the ultimate standard of beauty. This is contrasted with a history of hostility toward other female artists, including Cardi B and Megan The Stallion, revealing a pattern of entrenched misogyny.

The narrative is further undermined by personal circumstances: her brother’s conviction for child sexual assault, her marriage to a man with a history of sexual offenses, and her support of these individuals through bail payments and public defense. Critics argue that Minaj exemplifies a broader cycle of abuse, where those who have suffered trauma internalize the logic of power abuse and repeat it in new contexts. Her political shifts—particularly her support for Donald Trump—are viewed not as genuine convictions but as tactical maneuvers to secure acceptance in conservative spaces.

The analysis concludes that Minaj’s actions reflect a deep entanglement with abusive systems, using performance and self-preservation to navigate power dynamics, rather than offering any meaningful critique or reform. This not only undermines her credibility as a cultural figure but also highlights a larger societal failure to address the normalization of harmful behavior in entertainment and politics.

FAQs

Nicki Minaj's appearance at the event drew criticism for allegedly promoting conservative messaging, including claims that Black women are being devalued, and for repeating transphobic and misogynistic tropes that critics say align with far-right propaganda.

Critics argue that Nicki Minaj has defended family members accused of abuse, including her brother and husband, and has repeatedly supported figures in the music industry with legal issues involving child exploitation, suggesting a pattern of aligning with abusers.

She expressed support for Donald Trump and framed the discussion around the idea that certain groups—especially white women—are being unfairly judged, which critics say echoes far-right narratives about identity politics and beauty standards.

Growing up in a household with domestic violence and abuse, critics suggest that her experiences have shaped her views, leading her to adopt a 'token' role in discussions about women's beauty and power, where she positions herself as a protector of Black women while downplaying others' autonomy.

She has been linked to legal cases involving her husband, Kenneth Petty, who was convicted of attempted rape and manslaughter, and her brother, Jelani, who was found guilty of sexually assaulting a minor. Critics also point to her family's support of these cases and alleged harassment of victims.

Her public statements shift inconsistently—such as supporting Trump in 2016 while criticizing his policies in earlier years—leading critics to view her as using performative politics to gain favor with powerful groups, especially in the context of conservative movements.

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