The animated lyric video for Nicki Minaj’s “Only” from her upcoming album, The Pinkprint, caused something of a stir last week with its Nazi-esque, propaganda poster imagery, which brought charges of antisemitism. Both Minaj and the video’s creator, Jeff Osborne, took to social media soon thereafter to do some much-needed spin doctoring, but the two did not to be on the same page in terms of their overall message. For some reason choosing MySpace as his platform, Osborne huffily refused to apologize for the video, which he said was “misinterpreted.” A more contrite Minaj, meanwhile, tweeted that the video was “influenced by a cartoon on Cartoon Network called Metalocalypse & Sin City.”
A YouTube user called neuroticmonkey—who also happens to be A.V. Club contributor Rob Dean—took this tweet (or at least half of it) as the inspiration for a video mashup called “The Only Gears.” “After Nicki Minaj said her lyric video was inspired by Metalocalypse,” says the clip’s description, “I decided to see how her song would sync up with the video for ‘The Gears’ as directed by Jon Schnepp.” The ensuing mashup shows that Minaj’s comparsion was quite apt, as “The Gears” and “Only” do strongly resemble one another. Visually, then, “The Only Gears” represents a step sideways. Musically, however, it is a step backwards, as the rather anemic and repetitive Minaj track is no match for the righteous sound of Dethklok.
