Ass Talks Back: How Nicki Minaj Takes Control of The Big Butt Narrative in Hip Hop
"How did you escape being more than just an ass?” Nicki Minaj is famous for, among other things, her big butt. It’s a major part of her image as an artist, performer, and media persona. Add that to the fact that she’s trying to make it big in an industry dominated by men obsessed with objectifying women and their body parts. It’s no wonder Charlemagne asked the question: how did she make it?

When Nicki entered the rap game, she did so presenting a familiar image: a beautiful, sexual, playful black woman that could deliver an energizing stage presence, a feminine swagger, and above all a big fat ass. The only difference was that, up until then, that packaged image had been relegated to the background of music videos and to the arms of your favorite male rapper. But Nicki came with the mic in hand. She was a butt with lyrics

Nicki’s visibility in the rap space by itself serves a critical purpose: it redefines hip hop as a place where a woman can be successful despite a very pervasive sexist culture, a place where this female rapper can create art at the intersection of being black and being a woman, where she can talk about her female body in her own terms. Just like the big booty has been incorporated and used as a trope in rap songs, videos, and performances, Nicki includes her ass in her own art as a response to the big butt narrative, largely created by men, that characterizes hip hopBusting the Myth of Interchangeable ButtsWhen big butts show up in rap, either in lyrics or videos, they do so as standalone body parts rather than belonging to a full, complete woman. The narrative often has a man as the sexual subject and women as sexual objects. This dynamic makes women disposable and their butts interchangeable. Take for example LL Cool J’s classic “Big Ole Butt” from 1989. He moves on from one woman to the next because he’s mesmerized by their plus-size posterior. Every time he gets with a girl, he ends up cheating on her because he finds another one whose "big ole butt” is more attractive

To LL Cool J, Nicki could have been the next Tina, Brenda, or Lisa — just another woman with a big ole butt. To rise above that, Nicki Minaj takes the very feature that in other rap songs consigns her to being a sexual object and turns it into an asset. In the remix to Big Sean’s “Dance (Ass),” she proudly claims the song’s namesake and wields it as her access to power. Nicki’s ass makes her a much needed leader for women with “big ole booties” who were previously treated as interchangeable. It gives her the liberty to be a sexual subject, reversing the usual roles and empowering women to both demand and dole out sex. Finally, her ass gives her an identity, something that makes her unique and irreplaceable. This verse destabilizes a hegemonic structure where women’s butts are used against them; it allows women to step in, claim their bodies for themselves, and shift the power dynamic in rapReturning the Male GazeIn music videos, hip hop’s masculine fascination with women’s asses marries cinema’s practice of chopping up female bodies with the camera for the viewing pleasure of the audience. Whether it’s a moving shot of a row of butts or video vixens shaking their big derrieres in the background or around the male MC, rap videos have a still current history of using women and their behinds as props. This consistent portrayal of women communicates the regressive notion that their worth is measured by no more than the sum of their curves and body parts whose primary purpose is to fulfill the sexual desires of men, both physically (for the male rapper at the forefront) and voyeuristically (by proxy for the presumed male-heterosexual spectator). With few exceptions, the invitation for women to join hip hop’s cinematic art consists of, as Wreckx-N-Effect sums it up, "Let me see your rump shaker.”

Nicki’s critical response to the genre’s gawking scopophilia comes complete with both lyrics and a video. Aptly titled “Lookin Ass,” this song is a straight-forward, plainly-stated critique of the male gaze. Directed by Nabil Elderkin, the black and white vid overtly uses the director seat to gaze with certain camera techniques: lingering shots of female curves, close-ups of lips and hips, a focus on the body instead of the head, pausing on body parts irrelevant to the narrative, slowly revealing and surveying the female body. These camera tricks that make Nicki the object of visual pleasure are intercalated with shots of men passively looking at the woman rapper. At the end of the video, Minaj draws guns and shoots at these explicit spectators, as if to signal her awareness of being gazed upon as well as her protest against the loss of autonomy concomitant with being observed. Couple this video with lyrics that attack the crumbling mask of masculinity used to institutionally devalue women, and you got an important structuralist response from Nicki to the asymmetric gender dynamics in this genreContinuing the Celebration, But for the Right ReasonsI can’t talk about big butts in hip hop without mentioning the ultimate booty anthem, “Baby Got Back” by Sir Mix-a-Lot. Blatantly and overly sexual for 1992, the track already followed a tradition of commemorating a large ass, but it has since become the ultimate proclamation of love for girls that got back. Yet the go-to, most popular rap song celebrating women's big butts was created by a man, from a man’s perspective, by someone who doesn’t even know what it’s like to have the coveted big butt

Minaj appropriates the song by remixing it into the hook for the Pink Print’s second single, “Anaconda.” Nicki Minaj is the spokesperson for big butts if there ever was any, so it makes sense for her to release her own take on the ass-praising classic. Here she samples the anthem, repurposed for the hook and bridge, and shifts focus away from the body part itself to tell the story of two sexcapades. The original lyrics to “Baby Got Back” sound patronizing and condescending: Mix-a-Lot tells girls with big butts they should be proud of their bodies simply because he approves of them; it’s not that big butts are inherently great, but rather that men derive pleasure from them. If they have big butts and are willing to show it off, the male rapper allows them to come into his Mercedes. Nicki Minaj rejects this premise and flips the narrative: in “Anaconda,” she rolls up in a Jaguar and fucks her men in her own car. The economically self-sufficient and independent speaker in Nicki’s song represents the notion that female body positivity shouldn’t come from or be dependent on men, regardless of how involved men are in sexual contexts“Before, I was just a rapping butt,” Nicki Minaj says. And that’s true —  through her career, she has accomplished much more than just that. Nicki Minaj today is singing, dancing, modeling, acting, topping charts, breaking records, building a business empire, making art, bringing feminism into hip hop. But on top of all that, she’s also a butt with lyrics, still. Though her message can sometimes be problematic in its delivery, Minaj’s music talks back to decades of big butt culture and addresses it from a new, much needed angle. It’s about time someone who actually has a big butt starts controlling the conversation