When it comes to cultural impact, few contemporary videos can top Nicki Minaj’s Anaconda. The self-love anthem – an ode to all the beautiful women with “fat asses” – provided a much needed reprieve from the ‘skinny equals beautiful’ narrative that dominates pop culture. Nicki gave all women a chance to celebrate their beauty, and took over the internet in the process.
As Nicki herself noted, the Anaconda video inspired countless costumes, think pieces, dances and memes. It dominated cultural conversation and broke the Vevo record for most views in 24 hours, with 19.6 million people watching in just a day. But Anaconda wasn’t nominated for Video of the Year at MTV’s VMAs. Nicki noted that if she was a different ‘kind‘ of artist, or her song had celebrated another type of woman, the situation would be different.
Taylor Swift, whose Bad Blood video was nominated, felt that Nicki couldn’t possibly be critiquing industry racism and instead decided Nicki’s commentary was actually about herself. Nicki corrected Taylor and retweeted a variety of comments on the situation. Here’s how it happened.
The ensuing media coverage described Nicki’s comments, which were clearly directed towards MTV, as ‘jabs’ and ‘slams’ aimed at Taylor. This just goes to prove Nicki’s point. Now is the perfect time to revisit the masterpiece that is ‘Anaconda’.
Credits
Text Isabelle Hellyer