The MTV Video Music Awards are tonight and their biggest award has ONLY WOMEN nominees for the first time in the show's history!
Plus a new shot of Nicki Minaj when I spotted her at a past New York Fashion Week + a personal story
The famed MTV Video Music Awards are tonight, hosted by Nicki Minaj.
It’s a significant night as it’s the first time, since the VMAs have been on the air, that all of the nominees for Artist of the Year are women! It’s especially timely, with all the memes circulating about Beyonce, Taylor Swift and Margot Robbie, via her production company’s “Barbie” movie, lifting the economy by billions. Billions!
Serious muscle! Good luck to these women tonight:
ARTIST OF THE YEAR NOMINEES from USA Today
Beyoncé – Parkwood Entertainment / Columbia Records
Doja Cat – Kemosabe Records / RCA Records
KAROL G – Interscope Records
Nicki Minaj – Republic Records
Shakira – Sony Music US Latin
Taylor Swift – Republic Records
MTV is also in the news because Drew Barrymore, who stepped down from hosting MTV’s Movie and TV Awards in May, citing WGA strike solidarity, is back in production on her TV series and the WGA is picketing. Although the show works under a different contract, The Network Television Code and not the WGA, it’s being argued that the choice is a ‘moral violation.’ I posted some past predictions on the strike here.
On a personal note, I had a chance to literally shoot my shot with Nicki Minaj at New York Fashion Week in 2014. She was kind, so I’m still a fan. The chaos around shooting her was my first Substack story and video, posted here.
As Alexander Wang’s guest at his fall fashion show, Minaj was gracious and charismatic as her car rolled up and she made sure that all the street fashion photographers got a shot, not always the norm during “arrivals” and “departures.”
I was thinking about how incredibly fun it was when I was a Vh1 executive, not merely about the job, but MTV’s location. It was a significant corner of Colorado Avenue in Santa Monica that had this infectious spirit at the time, with a small airstream trailer parked in the lobby.