Nicki Minaj‘s reign continues with the release of the “Ganja Burn” music video. The Mert Alas & Marcus Piggott-directed visual starts with the story of a “generous queen” who dies along with her army by a group of enemies. The queen played by Nicki is eventually revived along with her forces, which she instructs to “kill everything in sight.”
The video then sees Nicki rising from her sand grave in royal pasties surrounded by her zombie horde. Nicki dances, sings to skulls, and watches her kingdom perched from a tree branch. Epic, sensual, and spooky the video leans in heavy to the overarching theme of Queen-era Nicki — anyone who dares challenges her seat at the throne is an enemy that needs to be dealt with and dismantled. Minaj’s performance would be right at home in a remake of The Mummy (no we’re not talking about the 2017 Tom Cruise remake).
In a Rolling Stone interview, Nicki’s recording engineer, Aubry “Big Juice” Delaine, discussed how “Ganja Burn” was created.
“That was crazy, because she probably freestyled 65%, 75% of the song,” Delaine said. “She got the beat from her producer J. Reid, head it, told me to load it up and ran in the booth. It was kind of the same with “Chun-Li.” She was playing around, singing, “ganja burn, ganja burn, ganja burn,” and then when she listened back, she was like, “that shit’s hard!” I wanna say the hook is still the freestyle she laid when she first stepped in the booth. She pulled that shit out of thin air.”
Do you think Nicki will bring an Egyptian kingdom to her VMA performance?
The 2018 MTV Video Music Awards will air live from Radio City Music Hall on Monday, August 20 at 9 p.m. ET/PT. Voting is now open at vma.mtv.com!
Be the first to comment