Moving on from her previous work involving long snakes and big butts, Nicki Minaj is exploring a new motif in her latest video: Nazi imagery.
The lyric video for "Only" featuring Drake, Lil Wayne, and Chris Brown, depicts cartoon versions of Minaj surrounded by soldiers with red arm bands, tanks, gas masks and Nazi-like propaganda emblazoned with the logo for her record label, Young Money, instead of a swastika.
The video was just released this past weekend, and surprise, surprise - people are not very happy about it.
"Nicki Minaj's new video disturbingly evokes Third Reich propaganda and constitutes a new low for pop culture's exploitation of Nazi symbolism," Abraham H. Foxman, national director of the Anti-Defamation League and a Holocaust survivor, said in a statement. "The irony should be lost on no one that this video debuted on the 76th anniversary of Kristallnacht, the 'night of broken glass' pogrom that signaled the beginning of the Final Solution and the Holocaust."
There hasn't been any sort of official response yet from Nicki Minaj or the the video's director, Jeff Osborne, but Osborne is sharing lots of the outrage through retweets on his account.
@JOsborne32 the nazi-esque video was pretty freaking tastless
— Kaiti Maddox (@KaitiMaddox) November 8, 2014
Disgusted by Nazi imagery in @JOsborne32's video for @NICKIMINAJ's "Only." Think before you make something that you want to call "art."
— ashtree (@ashtree17) November 8, 2014
@JOsborne32 Sooo was there a point to that aesthetic beyond shock value and fascist fashion?
— James Birmingham (@JWBirmingham) November 8, 2014