Last week, Nicki Minaj took to Twitter to respond to critics who questioned her lyrical abilities and once again, she’s speaking out against her commentators. In a recent interview with Billboard, Minaj defended her recital of Maya Angelou's "Still I Rise" poem during A&E’s Shining A Light: A Concert for Progress on Race in America.
It’s safe to say that Minaj raised more than a few eyebrows during her delivery of Angelou’s work, namely due to her clothing selection. Viewers took to social networks to blast Minaj for not being dressed appropriately enough, but there was one fault-finder in particular who stood out to the rapstress. She responded during the interview, saying that people were missing the whole point of the poem.
“It was the most spot-on poem that Nicki Minaj could have ever read. And it’s funny; it ended up proving a point. Because I remember going online after and lots of people said such beautiful things. But there was one lady, an older black woman, who said, ‘She shouldn’t be reading that poem.’ And she discussed how I dressed. I love that she said that, because she doesn’t even realize the poem is discussing sexiness, owning your sex appeal,” Minaj said.
She further drove her point home quoting lines from the poem again, “Does my sexiness upset you? / Does it come as a surprise / That I dance like I’ve got diamonds/At the meeting of my thighs?”
Minaj continued to fire back, saying, “And this woman, she was discussing her PhDs, all this education she had — but she couldn’t put two and two together about the theme of the poem. My entire career has been that poem in a nutshell.”
Minaj recently sent out a series of tweets responding to those who discredited her success and suggested that her rise to stardom was not directly related to her musical talent, but rather her eye catching assets.
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