the current popular activist hashtag ‘#BlackLivesMatter’ by tweeting: ‘#ALLLivesmatter.’
I was trending in America for several hours as Black Twitter vented its wrath at my supposed attempt to ‘delegitimize black lives’.
One person even dubbed me a ‘white supremacist’ as the bile spewed in, despite the fact that I spent much of my time at CNN – when I wasn’t confronting gun nuts – fighting for racial equality and justice for murdered young innocent black men like Trayvon Martin.
So I have every sympathy with Taylor, who did absolutely nothing wrong.
And I have no sympathy with Nicki Minaj, who emerges as a whiny brat that just doesn’t like losing.
Her charges of racism and big-bodyism are frankly laughable when you consider that three of the five nominations for Video of the Year are black artists.
And one of them is Beyonce, whose own body is far more aligned to the Minaj school of physical beauty than Taylor Swift’s.
Further, 43 of the entire list of 75 nominations for this year’s VMAs include black artists.
Oh, and Minaj herself gets three nominations in other categories.
So the central allegations are a load of old hogwash.
The reason your video didn’t get nominated for Video of the Year, Ms Minaj, is that it wasn’t as good as the others which did.
Taylor Swift, Beyonce, Bruno Mars, Ed Sheeran and Kendrick Lamar all made better ones.
That’s not my opinion because I’m white.
Or because I prefer skinny women to more voluptuous women (for the record, I don’t…).
It’s my opinion based on watching them all, and agreeing with the nominations
In one final dig at Taylor Swift, Minaj moaned that whereas Taylor was applauded for leaving the music streaming company Spotify, she herself was ‘dragged’ for launching a rival called Tidal.
What she failed to point out was that Taylor put her new album on Tidal, thus directly supporting it.
There’s no doubt that in the past, the music industry was, like Hollywood, rife with racism, both overt and covert.
There’s also no doubt that many of the world’s top music stars today are black, and command both the financial reward and respect that such status and talent deserves.
For Nicki Minaj, who is indisputably very talented, to play the race card just because her video didn’t get the nomination she wanted is a cheap piece of faux outrage deliberately designed to stir up unnecessary racial tension where it shouldn’t exist.
Shame on you, Ms Minaj.
Actually, there’s no “shame” at all–until we hear from MTV about what the criteria is for nominations on the VOTY award. If it is fan-based, that’s cut and dry-Nicki Minaj has no argument. They chose Taylor-simple as that. But if it is an algorithm, MTV would have to first explain why Taylor’s video (for which she is nom’d for Video of the Year)…is only two months old (dropped May 2015). And although a great song among Taylor’s hot song repertoire, Nicki’s “Anaconda” is 11 months old (dropped August 2014) and reached popularity via controversial buzz alone. That information is crucial-not even knowing what
