13 November 2014
Newsdesk
Billboard exclusively spoke with Jeff Osborne, director of Nicki Minaj's "Only", about the controversy surrounding the lyric video.
Since the clip's premiere last week, Minaj and the director have faced criticism for the videos Nazi imagery.
While Osborne told Myspace on Tuesday that the models and symbols used in the visual "are all representative of Nazism," the director tells Billboard that neither he nor the video are anti-Semitic.
"The reason I'm not apologizing is because neither I nor the video are anti-semitic. I can't be sorry for something I'm being falsely accused of. The video represents Young Money as a generic totalitarian regime, which takes images and symbols from several countries and time periods, one of which is Nazism ," says Osborne in an exclusive statement.
" As an artist I have two voids to fill. First, meeting the demands of the client and two, creatively applying my own voice where I can. The Young Money team came to me with a set of parameters in which they exactly stated -- something black and white, dark, ominous, with hints of imagery like Sin City or Metalocalypse. "
