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Enough with the Lady Gaga comparisons already. Nicki Minaj is setting the record straight.
Last night the rapper sat down with Juju Chang on ABC’s “Nightline,” where she was asked whether she takes offense to all the Mama Monster comparisons.
“Offend me? No. Irks me? Yeah, because we are in completely different lanes,” Nicki responded.
She continued, “First of all, I’m a rapper. First of all, I’m from Southside Jamaica, Queens, and I could say some really crazy lyrics right now, but I won’t.”
Nicki then flipped the script on Chang by asking what parallels she sees between the two artists.
“The wigs,” Chang pointed out. “The over-the-top costumes.”
“Every female in this game wears wigs,” Nicki retorted. “Over the top costumes? Eeh, try again.”
Don't call her Gaga Reloaded.Nicki Minaj, whose performance at the Grammys this year was meant to shock and get people talking (let's see, where have we seen that before...), didn't appear to take kindly during her sit-down with Nightline to questions about the inevitable comparisons made between her and Lady Gaga.
At least, the interviewer certainly seemed to think the comparison was inevitable.
"Offends me, no. Irks me, yes," Minaj said when ABC's Juju Chang asked if the Lady Gaga comparisons do, indeed, offend the similarly flamboyant hip-hop star. "We are in completely different lanes."
"First of all," the "Super Bass" artist said defiantly, "I'm a rapper. I'm from southside Jamaica, Queens. I could say some really crazy lyrics right now, but I won't. Why don't I turn the cameras around and ask you?"
So, Chang, not wanting to point out that Lady Gaga's a native New Yorker, too, mentioned that they both wear wigs.
"Wigs?" Minaj retorted. "Every female in this game—every female in this game—wears wigs."
Um...the clothes, then?
"Over-the-top costumes?" she replied skeptically, making a buzzer sound. "Try again!"
Despite her aversion to being compared to Gaga, however, Minaj had kind things to say about her fellow star.
"Gaga's a fantastic artist, you know, she paved her way," she added. "She's opened her own lane. But I think that I have my own lane, and we never cross. Ever. So, you know, I really don't get the comparison anymore. Our music doesn't sound the same. Our stage presence is not the same. I just can't see the similarities."
A similarity she admits to, meanwhile, is the one between her Good Morning America performance last summer and her appearance on the Today show last week: she suffered nipple-flashing wardrobe malfunctions during both!
"That was devastating," Minaj said. "I feel bad...I always put myself in the parents' shoes when stuff like that happens. But I know that I would never, ever, ever—swear to God—do something like that on purpose."
"Sometimes I want to just pull the off-switch," she said of her rapid ascension up the fame ladder. "But you can't because if you go outside, you have to give people your all. You can't say, 'Oh, you know what? I'm not feeling good today.' No. No one's trying to hear that. When a woman comes up to you and says, 'Hey, my daughter's your biggest fan. Can we have a picture?' You can't say no."
True. All you can do is load up on the double-sided tape, take a deep breath and walk out that door.
