Fond of poaching Madonna’s most prized and trusted collaborators of late (see: the videos for “Chun-Li” and “Barbie Tingz“), Nicki Minaj is now turning to sought after Turkish photographers Mert Alas and Marcus Piggott for her latest video a.k.a. track one from Queen (new royalty in hip hop albums), “Ganja Burn.” As one of the most evocative songs from the record in terms of conjuring images of far off, exotic locations, it’s only right that the duo should set Nicki’s stage in the desert (where we soon see just how that cover image for Queen came about). To lend a sweeping and epic slant to the narrative, the video commences with three title cards that read altogether,
Once upon a time, in a world unknown… there lived a queen. The generous queen. One day, her enemies all came together to hold a secret meeting and concocted a plan to take the generous queen down. They conspired with someone who was once very close to her & struck like a thief in the night. Though the queen could hear & see them in her mind, she decided to allow them an easy victory. She advised her army to do & say nothing. They slaughtered her village. What they perceived as death was a deep sleep. Once the generous queen had enough of her rest, she began to arise as she blew life back into her army. They all assembled, stronger & better than ever. They became more protective of the queen than ever before. She made a command. One command. ‘Kill everything in sight.’ With those words, her enemies were all put to death. The queen’s empire celebrated. They asked her, ‘Why did you allow us to be defeated?’ She responded, ‘So that generations for years & years to come would know, that even in the grave, he is lord.
It’s not exactly the “chill vibes” one would expect coming from an intro for a song with the word “ganja” in it. But Nicki isn’t here to play no matter what the extent of her sobriety is. And one has to respect that she would refer to herself as “he” in the end. For it is still the male pronoun most commonly associated with absolutist power. Not anymore, for from the moment we see the “strategically designed architecture” (as she phrases it in the “Chun-Li” video) silhouetted in sand, we know that this queen is going to rise like Saint Lazarus from the so-called dead. And she does, burning us through the screen with her determined gaze. A stare that says, “How dare you try to fuck with me?–and after all I did for you.” But she’s waited this long to show them all who is–and always was–a queen, taking her time with a slow (ganja) burn. Writhing around in the sand so as to get her bearings and reacquaint herself with showing her majesty, the sentiment behind the lyrics, “Abstaining from sex, had to zen my body/I ain’t givin’, so don’t ask, I don’t lend my body/Gotta be king status to give men my body,” are given further credence as she lets Mert and Marcus focus on her finer points.
Exhaling plumes of the requisite ganja smoke as though to revive both herself and the skeletons of one of her army members, the skull, too, responds to the power of the ganja burn by exhaling his own smoke. Soon, Nicki has revived them all, her entire devoted (and attractive) legion. Ready to rule again–this time with more force than ever–the song is a very clear allusion to how she stayed out of the game for longer than usual (The Pinkprint was released in 2014), only to find that there was a new queen reported to be on her throne. Though Nicki is saying, “They done went to witch doctors to bury the Barbie/But I double back, kill bitches, bury the body,” that last word is twisted in such a way as to sound like “Bardi,” one of Cardi B’s many unnecessary nicknames, which she refers to herself as in “Bartier Cardi.”
Thus, it’s no wonder she rallies her army to the cry of, “Unlike a lot of these hoes whether wack or lit/At least I can say I wrote every rap I spit/Put my blood, sweat and tears in perfectin’ my craft/Still every team’s number one pick in the draft/You could bring anybody, weatherman, pick a day/I’m Kobe, KD, Kyrie! Pick a K!” So it is that her men gather around her to watch her stand at the center of a ring of fire–a fairly overt metaphor, particularly after the scandalized reaction to “Barbie Dreams.”
And so they dance, honoring her in her crown, with the direction and aesthetic brilliance of Mert and Marcus (also recently evident in a certain Vogue Italia cover story) lending the video the feeling that’s been lost from most movies: a cinematic experience.
A tree that appears in the desert toward the end proves that there is sudden life in an abyss of deadness when you least expect it. Hence, Minaj, in her Cleopatra-like headpiece, mounts the tree, reclaiming a throne that could never be dominated by anyone other than her in the first place. Concluding with the same shot of her buried in the sand, it is a reminder that rulers you once wrote off as dead and buried can come back to haunt you at any time and in any form. Let’s hope Nixon does the same, because even that would be a better replacement for the current Oppressor-in-Chief.
