Nicki Minaj for W Magazine

Love this. Nicki Minaj has such an incredible sense of style. Love the clothes and the pose. Especially the crazy eye. Makes me think of Carol Burnett.

I think it’s amazing how well they were able to correlate today’s couture designs to the historical representations. But yeah, the crazy, wild-eyed look doesn’t enhance the story.

I’ve been staring at that cover for a solid 5 minutes, now, and the only possible explanations I can come up with involve either John Berger’s Ways of Seeing or a serial killer in the making.

She’d probably stop with the crazy eyes once someone tells her she looks exactly like Minnie Driver when she does that.

I don’t know why, but she is like nails on a chalk board for me. Maybe it’s her big fake butt (there is actually a picture/s floating around showing the padding), or it’s the fact that she uses a dildo on stage as a prop.  I mean really? Has it come to that? Can you go any lower as a pop star?  Ok, yea, you can, I know.  

I am almost as tired of Nicki as I am of Beyonce, and that crazy looks is something she does entirely too often. But I think the photography is nice.

So tired of Nicki’s wide-eyed Barbie doll gaze.

shes clearly trying to make the psycho-gaze her trademark, but i wish she would move on. it wasnt all that great to begin with, and now its actually ruining an otherwise very fabulous editorial.

I love the concept, but either the Marquise de Pompadour or Madame Barbe de Rimsky-Korsakov should have been the cover.  And not to put too fine a point on it, but isn’t her natural skin tone a bit darker than shown here?

Well. I like the wild-eyed look. It’s a weird world to land in, isn’t it? So why not? It’s almost a wink at the audience;” yes, you know I’m dressing up to see if I can shock you, and YOU know I’m going to pull something out to try to shock you, and you’re going to pretend you’re NOT shocked and I? I’m going to sit here and pretend it’s all crazy. ‘Cause it is, just a bit, but not in the way you’d think. ” I love the photos, love the costumes, and hey…while everyone else is claiming to be the reincarnation of Cleopatra and Marilyn Monroe, I think I’ll lay claim to Madame Barbe de Rimsky-Korsakov…why not?

“We don’t know what the hell that thing is supposed to be on the cover, and we don’t understand why she’s giving the same crazy, wild-eyed look in every picture.”

hear, hear – that cover is giving me the heebie-jeebies

Some of the photos look like something out of a comic book (the first one, for example). Makes the whole set campy and a little sad. The last one is beautiful, however.

These look so half-assed and cheap. Bad photographer, bad!

Liked the last two best. In the first two, her eyes ruined the look.

I would like it if her face weren’t so cray-cray. BUT she looks ah-mazing in that last one.

i think what the thing on the cover is supposed to be is an exaggerated eye miniature.
http://imageevent.com/bluboi/eyes
{as an aside, her whole website is amazing– not just the eye miniature section.}
otoh: why they’re leading it from her eye w/ frankenstinian blood-stitches i have no idea, unless it’s to up the edge-quotient [EQ] since it’s nicki minaj on hallowe’en, no less.

I think I’m more put off by her stiff poses than the crazy eyes.  The women in the paintings (esp. the first and last ones) look like they were captured in mid-gesture.  If Nicki had put some grace into her poses it would have worked better.  Cool idea, though.

These are gorgeous? Are you kidding me? This is the cheesiest, tackiest editorial I’ve seen in a long, long time. A marginally original idea, very badly executed. It’s joke-y and cartoonish. Minaj is clearly the wrong choice. She does not evoke any of the original paintings’ beauty, spirit, mood, etc. I can’t imagine why they published these shots once they saw them. The oval picture looks like some crap mall photograph that someone (with very bad taste) hung over their plastic-covered dining table. I feel like asking you to take this post down, it’s so offensive. i.e., stupid and ugly.

Ultra-hate the way she’s posed in the second one (where she’s the Comtesse du Barry.) The way the dress is laying it looks like she either has her knees all splayed out or she’s just wide in a very strange way (which of course, she isn’t.) I get that part of the shoot is to show off the clothes, but some of the other shots showed them off much less than this one would have if they’d put her in a slightly more flattering pose.

Dear god, she CANNOT model for the life of her. I’m fine with having a signature look but crazy eyes in every picture is like a joke someone repeats 5 times in a row. It gets old really fast.

So is she actually photographed wearing these clothes, or is her face just pasted onto each portrait? I honestly cannot tell, especially with the second portrait.

I just do not get this one.

Me likey…and my god is Nicki Minaj gorgeous.  Girl needs to tone down the drag and work the natural beauty

She is a ridiculous choice as model for these looks. The crazy eyes ruin the “arty” part of it and just push them into surreal land. She cannot give decent face to save her life.

hahaha she’s so funny

stunning. but wtf with the crazy face?

I like the last one. The others look a bit … uncanny.