"Right Thru Me": Authenticity, Performance, and the Nicki Minaj Hate

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"RightThru Me": Authenticity, Performance, and the Nicki Minaj Hateby Javon Johnson | special to NewBlackMan
I began teaching at the University ofSouthern California in fall 2010 as the Visions and Voices Provost'sPostdoctoral Fellow. Among others, one of my duties as Postdoc is to teachAfrican American Popular Culture. One of the biggestdifficulties with teaching a course such as this is the seemingly impossibletask of trying to get my students to move beyond simply labeling aspects of Blackpop culture as good or bad – that is, getting them to unearth and criticallydiscuss the political, social, economic, and historical stakes in Black film,music, theater, dance, literature and other forms of Black popular culture.
I struggled mightily with getting them to see how a Blackartist or sports figure could simultaneously be good and bad and how thoselabels, even when collapsed, do little to explain how violent rap lyrics areused as justification for unfair policing practices in Black communities, howliterature and music is often used as a means for many Black people to enterinto a political arena that historically denied us access, or even how Blackpopular culture illustrates that the U.S., since pre-Civil War chattel slavery,has had, and will continue to have, a perverse preoccupation with Black bodies.  
My class is not the only group of people who have troublemoving beyond the ever-limiting dualities of good and bad. Like my students whocould not wait to tell me all of the reasons they feel Nicki Minaj is a badartist, icon, and even person, many Black people that I speak with are quick tothrow the Harajuku Barbie under the bus on account that, as one of my studentsput it, "She makes [Black women] look bad, like all we are good for is ass,hips, and partying." Fellow rappers such as Lil Mama and Pepa have commented onNicki's over-the-top dress up and character voices, with Kid Sister asking, "dopeople take her seriously?" What is most troubling about comments such as theseis how reductive they are, how readily they dismiss Black women's identitypossibilities, in that anyone who dresses and talks like Nicki must be sellingout and doing a disservice to real hip-hop, real Black people, and real women.
The politicsof selling out aside, I am deeply troubled with how we read Lady Gaga as abrilliant postmodern pop artist and Nicki as little more than a fake who playsdress up for cash. What does that say about our understandings of Black womenas related to the politics of respectability? Nicki disserves applause forcarving out a space in an overly male dominated rap world, and, as she did in arecent Vibe.com interview, she often uses that space to tell women and girlsthey "are beautiful…sexy…[and powerful because] they need to be told that." Mixing thezaniness of ODB and Busta Rhymes with lyrical prowess of Lil Wayne and thecreativity of Lil Kim and Andre 3000, all wrapped in a Strangé Grace Jones bow,the fact that Nicki can tell all the men in rap, or perhaps the world for thatmatter, "you can be the king or watch the queen conquer," that is – join me orbe destroyed by me, highlights the strength and boldness she possesses. More than herability to dominate a male driven hip-hop community or the lines promotingwomen's empowerment throughout her work, it is her playfulness, coupled withher perceived sexuality and gender identity that causes the most panic. It isour inability to define and pin down Nicki's identities that scare us most. Hervoices and dress up lead many to question not only if Nicki is "real," thatindefinable quality that permeates every fiber of hip-hop, but also for some toquestion her sexuality. In a hip-hop world where the most valuable currency isauthenticity, the anxiety, or hate for that matter, Nicki causes stem mostlyfrom the fact that she puts front stage all the things most rappers hide behindthe curtains. Her entire persona, which relies on a healthy amount oftheatricality, exposes how the real is as constructed as the reel, which makesher performance shattering because too many of us invest a lot in the idea thathip-hop is undeniable and unapologetic truth. In this way,it is my larger contention that we are reading Nicki Minaj all wrong. Ratherthan figuring her characters, voices, and costumes as faking, I propose that weread it as making, as a performance of multiple reals that exist on the samebody. And, it is quite precisely her Barbie like plasticity, her ability tomold herself into the woman she needs to be at any given moment, which is mostamazing. Nicki's malleability, her ability to be such a monster and such a ladyin the same verse, complicates our understanding of identity performances toaccount for the ways in which people can be dynamic, complex, contradictory,and fractured beings all at once.     Whether it is Onika Tanya Miraj, Nicki Minaj, RomanZolanski, or any of her other alter egos, Nicki plays with identity in waysthat would make any scholar of performance proud. And, how real and, moreimportant, brilliant is it for someone who studied theater to use characters intheir career in entertainment? Nicki's vague and playful gender and sexuality performancesstand as constant reminders that identity, never fixed, is always in flux. Thisis not to say that Nicki Minaj is unproblematic. Rather, her dynamicperformances both on and off the hip-hop stage open up spaces for amazing queerand feminist possibilities and they are constant reminders how frequentlyarchaic identity tropes fail in everyday life, and quite honestly we need to bereminded of that on a more regular basis.
I am not asking for the singular real Nicki, instead Iwelcome all of her. The ability to alter one's identity as one wishes ispowerful, after all, it is the stuff that makes up many superhero narratives. Iwonder, however, when we will begin to see this potentially subversivepossibility as less a hindrance and more of an ability.
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JavonJohnson is currently the Visions & Voices Provost's Postdoctoral Fellow atthe University of Southern California, where he teaches in the Department ofAmerican Studies & Ethnicity. He earned his Ph.D. in Performance Studies,with a cognate in African American Studies and a certificate in Gender Studies,from Northwestern University. He is a back-to-back national poetry slamchampion (2003 & 2004), has appeared on HBO's Def Poetry Jam,BET's Lyric Café, and co-wrote a documentary titled Crossover, whichaired on Showtime, in collaboration with the NBA and Nike. He has written forOur Weekly, Text & Performance Quarterly, and is currently working on hisbook, tentatively titled, Owning Blackness: Poetry Slams and the Making ofSpoken Word Communities.[image error]