She started out a fearless feminist rap artist. Now, she's the worst thing in music.

Nicki Minaj’s new song is, to put it mildly, a fiery hellish disaster.

The single “Lookin Ass Nigga” is everything that’s wrong with hip-hop, pop, and rap rolled into one aggressively vile 2-minute-50-second video.

In the clip, Nicki sits on a chair in a desert, wearing a fish-net body stocking. She contorts her bodacious bod as a man watches, drunk with lust. She drops the N bomb 46 times by my count, sings about rape, and fires off two automatic machine guns into the sun because murder is hot.

Here it is, if you can tolerate watching a formerly excellent artist squander her talent in the name of grubby, violent fame.

It’s not pleasant. You’ve been warned.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=vEZ-e6tBigY

Look. You don’t make a music video like this without knowing exactly what reaction it will get. And maybe I’m playing right into Nicki’s perfectly manicured hands with my outrage. But I think it’s a really gross example of how fame and money can corrupt an artist.

And worst of all, it’s criminally unimaginative. This is what happens when a singer and her gang of producers run out of ideas to be risqué and just lazily shoved as many offensive things into one video as possible.

Can we make sure Nicki’s wearing practically nothing?

Obviously.

Have we got a creepy man who can personify the male gaze?

Yep.

Have we got rape lyrics?

Absolutely.

Ummm… What about machine guns? Have we got guns?

Of course. One for each hand.

Do we say the N-word  gratuitously over and over?

46 times.

Good. 46 is good. 

Nicki Minaj has always been pretty hardcore. She’s a woman in a man’s game – rap – and she’s always been tough. But this is loud, exploitative rubbish and she’s better than that. Or at least, I thought she was.

If this is her way of saying to the world, “Fuck you man, I’m Nicki Minaj! I do what I want!” then she’s lost her way. Somewhere between Starships and the American Idol judging panel, Nicki morphed from a strong, talented woman turned into an attention-grabbing pop diva with nothing of substance to say. She went from the adorable Bohemian who sang with little girls on The Ellen Show to a mindless rapper singing “I’m gonna rape you, n****er.”

And frankly, I’m sick of watching that happen. Be better that this, Nicki. Be better than this, hip hop.