It's cool that Ellen asks Nicki to recount the trials of her childhood and Nicki is all "actually everyone already knows what happened because I talked about it on MTV." There's nothing too complicated about her performance either. Flanked by two leotard lookalikes, Nicki just poses her face and calligraphy-hands, stands goddess column on top of some ice-dagger platform booties that Lil Wayne bought her.
On the couch with Ellen, Nicki kept tug-brushing at the drape of her wig as a safety blanket or a kind of courtesy. But she did not afford Joan Rivers and her Fashion Police gang the same grace last Friday night. Instead she barely moved, kept her bright berry lips tight, no teeth grins. Making fun of Bai Ling? Joan took that one out of the way-back joke cabinet.
