We’re just a half-hour into the 2015 MTV Video Music Awards and Nicki Minaj, bless her, has already won the whole damn show.
First, the bootylicious “Anaconda” singer performed a PR-orchestrated duet with Taylor Swift. Yes, Swift and Minaj’s publicists have been working overtime this week, whipping up a very public détente between the two music powerhouses following an unfortunate—and downright strange—Twitter feud, as the two came out for a Coming to America-themed team-up rendition of the Minaj tune “The Night Is Still Young.” The whole thing looked pretty forced and awkward, but hey, it seems like the two are on pretty good terms.Then, when Minaj took home the Best Hip-Hop Video for “Anaconda,” she called out VMAs host Miley Cyrus for whitesplaining race to her in a recent interview the ex-Disney tween conducted with The New York Times.
“Back to this bitch that had a lot of stuff to say about me in the press, what’s good!” Minaj exclaimed to Cyrus, looking genuinely pissed. The camera then quickly cut back to the night’s host, who stumbled her way through a mea culpa about how her words were twisted around by the press, even though these were very long quotes in The New York Times.
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It all started when Minaj tweeted the following after her video for “Anaconda” was snubbed for a VMAs Video of the Year nomination:
Swift misinterpreted the ambiguous tweet and thought it was all about her, since her video for “Bad Blood,” featuring a bevy of skinny models, received the most nods of any video:
They went back and forth a bit more before finally making nice.
Well, Cyrus, who has benefited quite a bit from appropriating black culture and aesthetics, sounded off on Minaj to The New York Times about the Swift-Minaj feud.
“If you do things with an open heart and you come at things with love, you would be heard and I would respect your statement. But I don’t respect your statement because of the anger that came with it. And it’s not anger like, ‘Guys, I’m frustrated about some things that are a bigger issue.’ You made it about you. Not to sound like a bitch, but that’s like, ‘Eh, I didn’t get my V.M.A.’”
“What I read sounded very Nicki Minaj, which, if you know Nicki Minaj is not too kind. It’s not very polite,” Cyrus continued. “I think there’s a way you speak to people with openness and love. You don’t have to start this pop star against pop star war. It became Nicki Minaj and Taylor in a fight, so now the story isn’t even on what you wanted it to be about. Now you’ve just given E! News ‘Catfight! Taylor and Nicki Go at It.’”
Cyrus closed her mini-lecture—again, this is the child of Billy Ray Cyrus who was raised with a silver spoon in her mouth, giving Minaj a lesson on race—with her most troubling statement:
“If you want to make it about race, there’s a way you could do that,” Cyrus said. “But don’t make it just about yourself. Say: ‘This is the reason why I think it’s important to be nominated. There’s girls everywhere with this body type.’”
As The Daily Beast’s Stereo Williams wrote, “in attempting to prove she’s aware, Miley proves she’s completely lacking in self-awareness.”
Well, it looks like Minaj had the last laugh. Here’s the raw feed of Cyrus’s reaction to Minaj going off-script:
