Last night, Nicki Minaj received the Video Vanguard Award at the VMAs. That’s MTV’s lifetime achievement award. Minaj returned to the VMA stage and performed a medley of her hits and her Barbz were thrilled. She wore Dolce & Gabbana. Her husband wasn’t there because he’s serving an in-home detention sentence in California, part of the long-running saga of his criminal past. Kenneth Petty and Nicki were credibly accused of targeting and harassing his rape victim and her family for years, to the point where his rape victim sued them both. In addition to that problematic history, I’d be willing to bet that Minaj is anti-vaxxer. Remember all of that sh-t she said about vaccines last year? Yeah. Remember how Safaree Samuels said Nicki was violent and she stabbed him? Hard pass on all of this.
Speaking of problematic bullsh-t, VMA producers decided to get Johnny Depp to do a cameo as “the moonman”. Producers then used LL Cool J’s “Mama Said Knock You Out” as the transition music right after the cameo. I don’t have words for how disgusting all of this is and how MTV is glorifying abusers right and left.
Photos courtesy of Cover Images.
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- MTV Video Music Awards 2022 held at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey. Featuring: Nicki Minaj Where: Newark , New Jersey, United States When: 28 Aug 2022 Credit: Doug Peters/PA Images/INSTARimag/Cover Images **North America Rights Only**
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- MTV Video Music Awards 2022 held at the Prudential Center in Newark, New Jersey. Featuring: Nicki Minaj Where: Newark , New Jersey, United States When: 28 Aug 2022 Credit: Doug Peters/PA Images/INSTARimag/Cover Images **North America Rights Only**
Johnny’s endless “victory lap” has been disgusting. As for Nicki….Team Cardi all the way!
What a giant dumpster fire. Gross.
Geriatric millennial here. Does MTV have any relevance anymore? Do the video awards matter? Back in my day (please pass the advil) when there was TRL and no social media and influencers, MTV set the tone for cool- that one channel was the tastemaker. Maybe courting these vile people for controversy is their sad way get attention because MTV doesn’t matter anymore.
Geriatric GenXer here. MTV has always courted controversy. Axl Rose, Madonna, for example. In the beginning it was a mutual relationship. The artists needed the exposure to sell. MTV needed the artists to be relevant. Now MTV gets one night a year to be important, so I guess the more controversial it is, the more to talk about.
Agreed. I’m a millennial as well and I never hear the kids/teens I know even mention MTV. I wasn’t even aware the VMAs are still a thing. The most recent news I personally heard regarding something MTV-related was the promotion for the new Beavis and Butt-Head movie on Paramount Plus. I may also be out of the loop though, because I don’t have cable anymore. I just do streaming services.
Either way, it’s disgusting the awards show featured these two.
I just find it hilarious that MTV even has a video music awards show. They haven’t played music videos on their channel in probably over 15 years ! It’s all just reality shows now.
Nicki Minajs choices are really strange, especially how defiant and open she is with them from her working with the likes of Tekashi 69 and also supporting her brother who is jailed for being a pedophile rapist.
The way my jaw dropped when I read what the transition music was after the Johnny Depp cameo. My God, what absolute pieces of trash signed off on this?
Sigh. All of this is so gross. I really don’t understand why the Nicki stuff isn’t talked about more often. She was an active participant in the harassment of her husbands victim and still stands by him. It’s disgusting. As for Johnny, he just needs to go away
The VMAS used to be about the music. Now it’s just a bunch of washed up wanna be’s *CRINGE*
One could argue that *MTV* itself used to be about music, but that was a long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long, long time ago.
Yep. The Real World did that and also ushered in reality TV.
What’s the opposite of a honk? 😶
Wow, this is spectacularly bad. Are they going after a specific demographic here? These are two very loud statements .
If this puts to fork in these award ceremonies, fine by me.
Johnny Depp is so embarrassing. Has the tik tok crowd caught on yet that they were gaslit by him and his team?
JD’s appearance revolved around him repeatedly saying he needs a job and is out of work, so I’m fine with that pathetic appearance being his “comeback” lol. What a loser.
I can’t believe Nicki Minaj received this award over much more deserving artists, particularly people like Christina Aguilera. With videos like Genie in a Bottle, Beautiful, Fighter, The Voice Within, Candyman, it’s kind of twisted that she hasn’t received this award yet while her contemporaries like Britney Spears and P!nk have. I can’t think of an iconic Nicki Minaj video that doesn’t have someone like Ariana Grande in it.
Even when they were cool and relevant to music, in the early 80s, MTV was racist as hell (cue video of 1983 David Bowie politely explaining to them how racist they were). So they’ve been pretty distasteful from the start.
The section of show I did see felt like it was her show that some others happened to show up to. She hosted, she performed, she won awards on top of the Vanguard, people commented about her when they were on stage. Do kids even follow her?
With so many 90s trends coming back right now (fashion, thin eyebrows (just read that CB story!), etc.), to me this feels like a 90s style, rude, sensational, overly provocative MTV moment.
Maybe my ol’ brain isn’t remembering it completely, but I recall they used to do a lot of stunts that had general public shock value, and especially at their awards shows. I also feel like MTV has long propped up problematic celebrities long past their expiration date. I may be completely mis-remembering the tone of the MTV of my youth, but these stupid stunts (esp Depp’s) felt on-brand for them in a gross, skin-crawling, retro way.
I don’t support it, and do not find it funny. We’re all way past that, MTV… come on.