Nicki Minaj is sorry if her animated music video for new single “Only” offended people, due to what The Anti-Defamation League described as “unadulterated Nazi imagery.”
The rapper took to Twitter on Tuesday morning to explain the imagery was actually inspired by Cartoon Network animated series “Metalocalypse” & “Sin City,” and that key members of the production team “happen to be Jewish.”
The artist who made the lyric video for “Only” was influenced by a cartoon on Cartoon Network called “Metalocalypse” & Sin City.
— NICKI MINAJ (@NICKIMINAJ) November 11, 2014
Both the producer, & person in charge of over seeing the lyric video (one of my best friends & videographer: A. Loucas), happen to be Jewish
— NICKI MINAJ (@NICKIMINAJ) November 11, 2014
I didn’t come up w/the concept, but I’m very sorry & take full responsibility if it has offended anyone. I’d never condone Nazism in my art.
— NICKI MINAJ (@NICKIMINAJ) November 11, 2014
The music video (above) features red flags that look very similar to those the Nazis hung from buildings occupied by Adolf Hitler’s forces during World War II. Instead of a swastika, the symbol of the Nazi party, the flags in the video are decorated by “YM,” the initials for Minaj’s Young Money record label.
Jeff Osborne, the Los Angeles-based filmmaker who made the video, seems to only have responded to criticism by retweeting messages from people complaining about the offensive nature of the video.
The ADL’s national director Abraham H. Foxman, who is also a Holocaust survivor, scolded Minaj and her entire team on Monday for the “insensitive” video released last Friday.
“Nicki Minaj‘s new video disturbingly evokes Third Reich propaganda and constitutes a new low for pop culture’s exploitation of Nazi symbolism,” Foxman said. “It is troubling that no one among Minaj’s group of producers, publicists and managers raised a red flag about the use of such imagery before ushering the video into public release.”