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Nicki Minaj is back doing PR for Donald Trump, and it’s messier than ever. Last week, she appeared at a treasury department summit in Washington DC to show support for Trump accounts, a new kind of investment account designed to “provide eligible American children with tax-advantaged investment accounts courtesy of President Donald J. Trump”, according to a government website.
The most disappointing part of the rapper’s recent turn toward Maga, though, is how her stans – a significant portion of whom are Black and queer – are responding. After the summit, Minaj’s followers defended her online and even helped push Trump’s agenda. “In a society full of hate and division, supporting Nicki Minaj is reminding people to see past political differences and see the human in one another,” one supporter wrote. Oh brother. Minaj is a perfect example of the cult of celebrity, the dangers of modern fan culture and how celebrity worship can intersect with politics in truly dangerous ways.
Everybody knows that Barbz, Minaj’s staunch fandom, go hard for her. They stood by her when she supported her brother who was convicted in 2017 of raping a child (Minaj reportedly paid his bail when he was arrested in 2015, visited him and put money on his inmate commissary), and when she was accused of harassing and attempting to intimidate the victim in her husband’s 1995 attempted rape conviction. (Minaj’s husband, Kenneth Petty, was convicted of first-degree attempted rape, and served about four years in prison. He was arrested in 2020 for failing to register as a sex offender in California, which brought the story back into public view. Jennifer Hough had sued both Minaj and Petty, and eventually dropped Minaj from the suit, but the claims against Petty are reportedly still pending. Although she didn’t speak publicly about the suit, Minaj filed documents in response to the suit that claimed Hough was lying for a payday.) And Barbz have stayed at the ready when it comes to the innumerable industry beefs Minaj has been involved in. So now that she’s in her Maga era, why would that devotion look any different?
Toxic fandoms are common, but what makes Barbz stand out from the others is how perfectly they mirror their idol. In building parasocial relationships that require them to be in total allegiance to Minaj, they also take on the worst parts of the rapper’s erratic, confrontational, petty, illogical and staunchly unaccountable personality.
Beyoncé rarely speaks to fans outside carefully curated platforms, and Taylor Swift at least pretends to not influence what her fans are thinking. But Minaj lives online, both feeding and exploiting the worst instincts of an audience that worships her. She has messaged her critics directly and dangled the carrot of access in front of her followers via intimate discussions that make them feel as if they are truly connected to her.
The fact of the matter is, to remain in Minaj’s world, you simply cannot “cross” her without feeling the venomous wrath of her fandom. And it seems that taking on her so-called enemies is one way Barbz stay connected to each other, and prove their loyalty to the rapper.
For some, being part of a fandom means more than just enjoying the creative product. And it seems like the communities and identities they’ve built around being a Barb are so deeply entrenched that defecting not only feels like a tall order (both socially and emotionally), but they’d also have to interrogate all the other ways they’ve supported her bad behavior, and have compromised their values just to remain in alignment with their icon.
Sadder still is the fact that Minaj’s reckless political moves are only contributing to the dehumanization of the same supporters who are egging her on. Trump has spent years waging war on groups that many of her fans identify with, including queer, racialized and poor people.
Minaj herself once criticized this same administration’s long-held anti-immigration stance, writing in a 2018 Instagram post about how she “came to this country as an illegal immigrant at five years old” and couldn’t “imagine the horror of being in a strange place and having [her] parents stripped away from [her]”.
Well, she’s finally getting her citizenship, apparently, even if she had to sell out her own to do it. “Finalizing that citizenship paperwork as we speak as per MY wonderful, gracious, charming President,” she posted on X, bragging about the gold card Trump gifted to her.
The Barbz’s approval of Trump, tacit and outright, via their support of Minaj means that they are both staying distracted from working toward their own liberation, and making themselves complicit in their own oppression.
Mercurial, deeply self-involved and obsessed with her own public image, Minaj is the kind of personality that her fans need to keep in check; but she’s also exactly the kind of person you can’t. So Barbz continue to live in a buffoonish kingdom, while their emperor struts around with no clothes on.
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Tayo Bero is a Guardian US columnist
