A Bit Fruity with Matt Bernstein - Why Nicki Minaj Threw It All Away For Fascism

Episode Date: December 26, 2025

When Nicki Minaj stepped on stage in Phoenix, Arizona, with one hand clasping Erika Kirk and the other waving to a crowd of white supremacists, even I was shocked. We’ve known the Queen of Rap to be many unsavory things: an insecure egomaniac, a steadfast defender of predators, an obsessive poster (she has my solidarity on that one). But “fascist propagandist” I did not see coming. Today, Olayemi Olurin, Kat Tenbarge and I draw a map of Nicki’s life to make sense of how she got here, what she hopes to receive from it, and if it’ll even pan out. Listen to bonus episodes on Patreon! Thanks to today’s sponsors! Work smarter, not harder, with Factor meals ready in two minutes at https://www.factormeals.com/fruity50off Start managing your money better and cancel unwanted expenses at https://www.rocketmoney.com/fruity.  Subscribe to Kat Tenbarge’s work. Follow Kat Tenbarge on Bluesky. Subscribe to Olay on YouTube. Follow Olay on Instagram. Find me on Instagram. Find A Bit Fruity on Instagram. Learn more about your ad choices. Visit megaphone.fm/adchoices

Dear young men, you have amazing role models like our handsome dashing president. Handsome dashing president. So Nikki 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 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? I 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 Nikki Minaj haters. I never believe that I could get such a, you see? You see. Look at her. Look at her. Oh. It's dark. The fact that the crowd was like gassing her up so, so much.

I'm sure that felt good for her because like she hasn't been in a situation for a while where she has like this many people being like, yes, as she's saying something so dumb. It's sad because something is obviously, I don't know what. I don't know. I see everybody on the internet is like, oh, you know, our house is supposed to get for a clothes. She must be looking for a pardon for her 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 for clothes that out.

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 he loves Nikki to try to give her a second to like come up with the talking points. but every question was designed like, and he sits and goes, 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 what she comes up with. The most oppressed group in America right now are blonde hair, blue-eyed 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 for this or 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 importance, like what I'm doing here. I've performed for 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 believe in Nikki. I believe several things. I believe Nikki is a jackass. I do believe that Nikki has stupid views that go to the right.

But I don't believe that Nikki Minaj believes what the fuck she's talking about up there. 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 J.D. Vance's whole thing. He said it at this conference. he said, we don't want to apologize for being white anymore. And 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 J.D. Vance and

Erica Kirk, who believe that the biggest injustice of our time is that some leftists on Twitter didn't like Sidney's 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 Nicky Minaj is to do all of this. The only time she tried, she went on some little like rant way to tell these her real opinions, who eventually was in relation to herself and talking about her perceived bullies and enemies and 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. God! And ultimately, I'm here to say, we need Trump in office. It's so sad because all it tells me is how down bad she is in whatever situation she's in. Because the reality is,

they could clap up there because you validate 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 your 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 moment of 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 gotten fed up with like 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 J.D. 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 Fruitie. 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 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 Jeffrey Starr, 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, Kat Tenbarge of Spitfire News and Olae Lorin, who is a

lawyer, who does cultural commentary as Lorinati on YouTube. And she is the woman who famously took down Eric Adams on the breakfast club. Fuck Eric Adams and good riddins 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 at an early college, like it was a point of pride. that I had memorized and could do the entire monster verse. Right of passage.

In high school, when I would like dance on the sidelines of basketball games, like the Nicki 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 stretch

thinner and thinner and thinner. and that, 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 Nicki Minaj hater. 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 Nicki 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 in Nikki is squarely this. Every injustice or unfair or systemic, like, reality

of what Nick Minaj has had to go through in a career, I would have made you champion her in the beginning. She is not against any of them. that. And she hates 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 a Ramey Ma with Terra Squad. You have Rod Higel. 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, 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 was a beautiful gal.

And so when you would see, like, her initial, like, feuds with, like, Little Kim, when Lil Kim was saying all these things about her, like, telling you that her attitude is this. And she is not somebody who pays homage and all this. Everybody was inclined to be on the Kim Minhaja sign. 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 it's just been indisputable. And I think what it is,

is that Cardi represents 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 Tadi, 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's ass enough. You could find interviews and clips Alado and all these people talking about how much inspiration they found it

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 when now you want to be a fascist propaganda, bitch? Shall we get into a little Nikki Minaj early life? We love chronology on this podcast when the ambulance is past. She already heard that the podcast has started and she's coming. The barbs have intercepted the feed and they're on their way. It's the barbs siege of a bit fruit. Literally. Literally. Everyone change your phone number now because they're all going to be leaked. We're going to 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 going to be like a documentary episode. There's just too much. So I'm going to 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 Space.

the capital of Trinidad, 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 kick Nicky's back in about, and we should be kicking her back in, including like the hypocrisy of being an immigrant actively aligning herself for the fascist administration of xenophobic. But what we should not be doing is leaning into xenophobia. And I see a lot of people that have always seen this galas, the queen of rap from Queens, New York,

going out of their way to talk about it 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 fudes with other people, specifically, Cardi B.

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 going to read part of this. She said, you said out of her. own mouth that the little girl in you hasn't forgiven your mother yet. 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 is like the birthplace of like every modern entertainer. If you want to see something crazy, go to the LaGuardia High School notable alumni Wikipedia 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 on Myspace,

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 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 YMT&B and all of that, but there was a time where Gucci man and and Waka and 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 all, like, sleeping away 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 slutch and they, only for Nikki to turn around in 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 Megastalian. Key Manage 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 going to 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 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 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 feature on their songs, 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. Like I said, I loved Nikki Minaj night school. I had a Nicki 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 over exposed. Like, I remember, like, you'd be hype 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

Nicky 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 macek 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. It's 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're telling you that everybody at every thought. 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 that and all of that politics and 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 uses social media 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 reached a point of no return.

I remember being in summer camp, Jewish summer camp, and like stealing 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 Schnaff at the same time, which like, it's just so random. Shout out to the Jewish summer camps in the Northeast. I would like to give a shout out two-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 aren't always that great, and getting takeout all the time obviously gets really expensive. One super helpful way that I have been able to tastefully cut corners is with Factor. Factor is a meal delivery service with gourmet, chef-made meals that make eating well easy. And the best part is that they're all ready to heat and eat in two minutes. There are all different menus for you to try.

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to get 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 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 sort of over the top femme camp aesthetics. Like I just remember it really spoke to me. Oleg, do you have any LGBTQ thoughts? The priest to me. I think would respect to that. There have been several women rappers, not just Nikki Minaj,

but there have been several of them that do a thing where they perform, they almost perform bisexuality for the male gays 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 bitches. And 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 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 have a solidarity with this community or or an allieship 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 an industry, she's always been like saved the pleasantness for her fans. But that is about capitalism. That is about making money.

And I'm not saying that like as a negative to her. That's what you're going to do. 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 shit that comes out of our mouth, 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 lot.

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, name's like real sweet. And she's like, well, what's going on? Like, oh, I've been really down lately. And she's like, oh, well, you know, it's been really hard for ever. Like, this just, this Trump administration, this administration isn't, doesn't feel good about the gays, doesn't treat this good. Like, it's hard for us right now.

Nikki Mazzar's like, basically I should have known he was like, come in with this bullshit. Mute their mic. Cust them off. So I said that to say, I think the last. in here is 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 bar before all else, like initial, like first identity, Barb, then like gay, then like entertainment journalist. And I have watched him defend Nikki Minaj. relentlessly 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 Wain's

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 know you been. Yeah. 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 Trisha Pettus. I'm sure. I'm sure there is Kat. Particularly because at around the exact same time, Trishapetus 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, because I don't push my beliefs on people.

Yeah. So I wanted to make my... official video slash support for Romney Ryan 2012. Yay. So basically one. Mitt Romney is super hot. Barack Obama did not care about Tushapetus 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 asked her. about the election. Question. You're from New York,

so you also must have an opinion on Donald Trump. Ola, do you want to read the response? There are points that he is 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. All of this 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 an alter ego,

like do we know, or not, she's being serious when she says, oh, I'm voting for Min 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 black adult 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 and your platform and the possibility for people to be influenced and not understand. So the fact in and of itself that it doesn't matter enough to you to be definitive, 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. I don't need you to, in your heart, believe all the things of the oppressor. I just need you to make way for it. And that's why 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 and whether he's kind of,

the fact alone that you're doing this kind of fucking bullshit. shit 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, like I said, a harbinger and 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 is limited in scope. You know what I mean? Like being a misogyn, you can be a regular run-in-a-mill, Hayden-ass bitch, who only wants you to be successful and not be a fascist

like at no point that I think one day, that bitch Nikki might come out and try and help manufacture consent for her genocide in Nigeria, you know. 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, Nikki 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 don't know. At the time, I just remember thinking like, oh, that was just such a clean dis 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 going to 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 Nikki 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 am 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 dis her and people like her, then she leans into, let me be cute with that on Twitter. the same way she's always trying to be cute with the Republican politicians all over Twitter and stuff now because that's who's who's in power. That's all it is. And so she throws her one little, her one little something. She knows people eat up fucking breadcrumbs. Like, oh, they want to send me on 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 judge.

Joe Schmo, Republican, can speak on Twitter, and she replying, oh, blah, blah, 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, Jalani. Nikki has an older brother named Jalani. 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 it's, hits Nikki's life hard. In 2017, Jalani, who was then 38, was found guilty of sexually assaulting a child younger than 13. Shortly after Jalani's arrest, Nikki paid his $100,000 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 Jalani 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 Jalani was around 35 at the time.

Nicky's and Jolani's mother, Carol, as well as Jolani'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 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 most favorable to Nikki and be as nuanced as possible as somebody who was a defense attorney at 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 important where we make the differentiations. I don't think there's anything inherently wrong about Nikim Minaj paying the bail for her brother so our brother can battle a case from the outside. I don't think it inherently means in paying his bail without anything further. I don't think it inherently means that she is defending an abuser or that's what it's going on here. I think you can think, and it's happened a lot of times. A lot of people have 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 the key back in from marrying somebody who is who is previously incarcerated or for a rape and for a manslaughter. It's not inherently that. I think there are arguments that can be made in abolitionist arguments that are to be made about accountability and atonement and going through the system and X, Y, Z. 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, or six, nine, 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 willing to be to be there for them, to be on their side. I could understand Nikki Menard's 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 the victim. I want to be clear because I think it could be, it can be dangerous when we, we think it is,

but it's not the progressive position in actualities that anybody 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 can never, they shouldn't be a part of society, they're not deserving a love, they can't be married again, of 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 broad stroke that 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 against Kenneth Petty and Niki 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 $500,000 for her to recant her allegations. And then this legal saga continues when in 2023, Kenneth and Nikki moved

from New York to L.A., where Kenneth does not immediately register as a second. ex-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 also isn't 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 cycle of abuse, victim psychology, and sort of Nikki's evolving political leanings around the same time that she's aligning with these abuses 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 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 around abuse. 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 V 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 carry that 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 facilitates and enables abuse also facilitates and enables conservative ideology.

Like they go hand in hand and oftentimes are one and the same. That to me like speaks to, I think a lot of the way that Nikki 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 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 Nikki Minaj where I sort of like drew my own line in the stand and was like, I don't even really 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 almost exclusively listen to pop music, so you got to, you got to help me out here. 6-9 is a rapper who around this time was doing like really highly charting music with Nikki Minaj. She was, she did trolls with him. I was going to say, didn't they do the trolls song together? 6-9 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 the music video. And 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 6-9 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 6-9. 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 bad. Like, fully, fully ain't nobody plug it with six and nine. 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 any that she does, it just like, it occurs to me that like she is doing what essentially society is encouraging her to do. Yeah, yeah, yeah, absolutely right, Kat. 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 trying to keep herself safe. And she's convinced herself that this is inevitable, but there is the token. You know, Charles, Derek Bell talks about the same faces at the bottom of the well. and he talks about rules of racial racial stamic. She thinks, okay, 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 going to be the one to get up there and say all this about black women, say all this about this. Say all this is. Say what y'all want to hear. So you protect me while everybody else is in danger.

It's a foolishly short-sighted defense mechanism, but it's one that we, see Nih Mnage employee 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 long-time friends over at Rocket Money. The cost of living is high and Trump, sure as shit, hasn't done anything to bring it down. Anyway, I like to stay organized about my money and spending and budgets and rent and all the things. It's how I've always been. It gives me anxiety when I feel like I'm not on top of every single little thing. If you want to feel like you're getting a better

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up to $740 a year when you use all of the app's premium features. If you want to cancel your unwanted subscriptions and reach your financial goals faster, you can head over to rocketmoney.com slash fruity to get started. That is rocketmoney.com slash fruity. And now let's get back to the episode. So amidst all of this legal drama and what I would say at this point is like reputational turmoil, COVID hits. And up until this point, most of what we know about Nikki Minaj's political identity is basically everything I've told you so far. It's pretty incoherent. It's more or less anti-Trump based on immigration policy, but she doesn't come out like that stridently against anything he does. And then in September of 2021, she hits us with perhaps the tweet that kicked off the undoing of the United States

as we know it today. I feel like I have this tweet burned in the back of my brain. Like I could recited 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.

I do think the real explanation here is that her cousin's friend, who, 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 Niki Menage 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 us. Like, is any part of this sound really? Like, why would it even be,

let me ask yourself, what Caribbean mind do you know would volunteer to anybody that he can 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 concox 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 Nikki Minaj at all were, 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, Nikki Minaj is one of us.

officials in Trinidad, the health ministry in Trinidad, investigated this claim. They were like, who is Nikki Minaj's cousin's friend? They ended up releasing public statements saying that they, quote, wasted so much time trying to confirm Nikki Minaj's comments about the COVID jab. The White House got on the phone with Nikki Minaj to discuss, like, why the vaccine was safe, and she didn't need to worry about it. and it's interesting that 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 so much attention to me give coked out Twitter rants. You see what I'm saying? Like, 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 ask yourself,

hmm, I wonder what they mean. Like, you don't try to make sense of it. But that's what people do with Nikki Minaj and it doesn't make sense because look at the words that are on the paper. Like, look at the words. that we're pretending could have come from somewhere legitimate. My cousin in Trinidad won't get the vaccine because his friend got it and became impotent. His testicles became swollen.

And we over here? Maybe her cousin had. Maybe the cousin friend don't exist. They don't exist. None of it's real. Nikki Minaj will be talking fuck. Nikki Minaj would double down on her anti-vax politics in December of 2020. where 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 her. 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 Nikkiman from 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 J.K. Rolling 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 Minaj, who for her whole career, has identified as female rap's number one star. And rightfully so from the beginning.

But by the early 20s, Cardi B is a similarly statute rival. Megan the Stallion has blown up. Doja Cat, Lotto, Sweetie, Ice Spice, Flomilly, Glorilla, all of 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 of that like, again, it's a gatekeeper mindset.

Like, she never stopped being successful. 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 mock. Not even just other women in rap. She was talking shit about Sizzata the other day.

She doesn't have 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 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 clues into reality. Like, 50 Cent has a book, 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 and 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 that, I realize like, oh shit, if I still want to be who I want to be, I still want to be a big tang, I still want to make money, I want to do this.

Like, I can still do that. I can still have 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 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 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, misogy noir. 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 it 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 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.

the really self 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 got to remember Red Ruby the Sleeves. Nikki Minaj was dissing her, calling her a horse, and making jokes about the Tory Lane shooting her.

Hiss is a response to at least two years of Nikki Minaj Manage talking openly talking shit about Magna's style and every time she got. And like, Hiss is significantly more subtle than I think what Nikki had been doing to Megan. But after his, that's when Nikki releases the AI-generated monstrosity. Megan, the stallion said, these holes don't be mad at Megan. These holes mad at Megan's law. Do you want to explain what Megan's law is?

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 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 that this is an important point too because everybody always feels the need

whenever anyone, anyone criticizes Nikki Minaj, anybody. You could be the biggest Nicki Minaj hater and everybody feels the needs to give her her her flowers. Like, oh, you know, Nikki is talented, Nikki is this, Nikki was tat, da-da-da-da. But let's start to talk about the fall off completely. Because it's not just, it hasn't just been a fall off of mental

stability or a principle or anything like that. Did you hear that bullshit? This track? The music ain't been it either, Chief. So not only is it moral bankruptcy, but it's also garbage. Because I'll bop to some moral bankruptcy if it's a banger. All right? A bangerid was not.

Megan Lee Salian 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 Lysalian. Malaugro 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 antisocial 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 deployment of the National Guard. And then Nikki. He applauds Trump for his outspokenness in the supposed Christian genocide that is supposedly taking place in Nigeria. She took a screenshot 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 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 Oleg, I know you know a lot about this. So can you explain to people what this is all about? I would say I would not qualify myself as somebody who knows a lot about it. But I do have the basic understanding that.

that everybody could and should have on the issue. So it is a long time 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 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 Aram is a terrorist, extremist group. that actually mostly targets Muslims because they are like fundamentalist Muslims who want like the strictest version of Islam to be 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 are going after are Muslims. That's who the majority of the victims are. But conservatives and have been positioning and intentionally propagandizing it as Christians are being genocided because they know that, one, they are playing on the fact that conservatives and Americans care more about 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. Nikki 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 their guns are 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 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 Nikki Minaj and them were saying that would not give the United States government justification to think they could go into Nigeria, guns ablaze in. But that is what Nikki Minaj is 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'll say, Nikki 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, which 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

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 Nikki Minaj up. There should be no more defenses of Nikki 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, you know, religious persecution, violent religious persecution anywhere. It's like as a, you know, 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 are. 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, et cetera, et cetera. And then Nikki replies,

Imagine Heron that Christians are being murdered and making it about you being gay. When my home was swatted multiple times with my innocent toddler inside, but maybe 20 officers with guns drawn pointed out of our home due to political corruption, you being gay couldn't save me. Crazy. She said, imagine heron, the 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 Nikki 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 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 here. So, Nikki Minaj continues throughout November and December to feud with the California governor Gavin Newsom. Remember, Nikki 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 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 Nikki replies on Twitter. Imagine being the guy

running on wanting to see trans kids. Ha ha. Not even. 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 Nikki have it out for Gavin Newsom like this? And it goes back to that little blip that she couldn't resist tweeting out about her getting swatted. So Nikki Minaj's house has been swatting 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 a SWAT team will show up. So Nikki'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 government. And it seems like she's pinning the trauma of being swatted on Gavin Newsome 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 U.S. government, 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 Mickey Minaj Day, 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 gag 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 politic. And she has that in every capacity.

And I think like it's okay to process it in your own time. It's okay to want to be mad, want to be mad about something, want to operate in your own. but it's an entirely different thing from like making that your flagship cause an agenda. You know what I mean? It's something that you come into the internet with. And I think, I don't think people of the barbs have ever asked of Nikki that she do anything more would not make it so 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, Nikki 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 she's like, 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 like petty grieving. with 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 birth 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 the gays. Come right here, Matt.

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 state.

They eat that shit. Not to get, not to have a big head about it. Not to have a big head about it. But like, it's so compelling. They love the like, I tried to be liberal, but they made it impossible. That is their big ting. 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 praying on someone who's in a state of like delusional paranoia or whether it's a competition. 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, 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 base, but they see an opportunity.

That's all it is. They see it in like, oh, great, a black superstar, black rap superstar ready to shield for us, beautiful, less invite her in. All she needs is a little bit of ego-stroken. And that's it, because that's all she wants out of it. And that's what I said. is Claire and all her responses all the time. She likes power and 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're saying some funny, you're saying whatever, all of a sudden. That's all it's about. If Gavin Newsom had said, fuck, Cotty 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 it's such, to me, it's like, it's like an abuse of power and of influence. Yeah, it's a politic of grievance. Your politics are moved based on 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 America. professed 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. Herker's just like, I love her. Yeah, I know it to me. And people will 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 they're thinking about things. And it deserves attention. You know, 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. takes, even the most skilled, even if you hate someone, like Nikki Minaj, Jeffrey Starr, 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 the questions, this is how to answer. And then 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 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, my auntie when she's drunk is just like that. Why do you think people have a problem with people speaking in their minds? It's so funny because it's a leading question. Like, Erica's already 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 that idea that they think we're upset. So every time she says something, they're like, they're like, it's like pumped 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 Nikki's a fool. That's why they're excited. That's what they're really applaud and like, yeah. A hundred percent. They, A, don't realize that, like, most people do not care about or, like, put stock into what Nikki 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, do you have any advice for boys? And Nikki Minaj, she's like, well, boys will be boys. And there's nothing wrong with that. For a lot for boys, 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.

Yeah. 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 Nikki 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 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 chockful 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. The very moment and each and every time you do anything else, anything autonomous, the minute you want to like actually speak as you, not just repeat their talking points, but fucking done with you. And they're 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 Nihita. You're not going to be their influencer. You're not going to be any of that. You're just a fucking talking beast, a token. And just like Herman Kane and Ben Carson and all of them before them, your Omar Rosa 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. of Charlie Kirk at one of his college debate events saying that Nikki Minaj is a bad role model. Right now, black culture is being held captive by influences, songs, and role models. I mean, Nikki Minaj, Cardi B. Okay, Nikki Minaj is causing dads to leave the home. Hold on it. 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 Candice Owens after Charlie Kirk's death shared texts that she had exchanged with Charlie, where the two of them were queening out about Nikki'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 Nikki 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 Nikki Minaj is a good role model for people. Charlie loves listening to Nicky Minaj. And for whatever it's worth, like I think Charlie would be so. so proud of what Nikki is doing right now, not because she's, you know, espousing conservative

ideals, but because she is grifting off of them. That's my conclusion. You done? I usually land on some sort of like joke or something, but this is me. I feel like that was a great final word. Cat and Olai. This was treacherous. Thank you so much for coming on the journey with me. Thank you for having us. Yes. He was this. fun. I'm really, I am happy for you, Ola, because you've been like a self-identified Nikki 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, we love to see it. It's about time, it be a safe space for the humanage haters. If this terrible year could bring us one good thing, it's the fall of the barbs. Yes, legitimately. Like, the barbs are a terrorist organization that we needed to put us off to. Where can people find more from each of you? You can subscribe to me at Oleranadi. 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, Oleranati, I also have Oleranati Pop and Aleranati Bites,

which has a great video about Nikki Minaj's foolishness with respect to her propaganda about Nigeria and the Trump administration. administration and I have Ole and chill, I have Olai and friends. So subscribe to any of my channels in the Illurinativerse. And then I'm at SpitfireNews.com, and you can also find me at Kattenbarred on Blue Sky and Instagram. And I am at Burnstein and you can find me at a bit fruity. The podcast you just listened to.

Oh, wait. He-he-ha-ha. No, I'm going to kill that. 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 the Stallion.

I love you so much. And until next time, stay fruity.