There’s a hidden message in Nicki Minaj’s “Anaconda” video, the YMCMB rapper spilled to GQ recently. The magazine interviewed Minaj during New York Fashion week last month, where she shared the feminist angle behind the booty-shaking video.

In the video, Minaj uses a banana as a phallic symbol and cuts it to pieces. The clip purposely comes after her lap dance scene with Drake. “At first I’m being sexual with the banana, and then it’s like, ‘Ha ha, no,’” she says.

The banana slicing is a metaphor for female empowerment. “That was important for us to show in the kitchen scene because it’s always about the female taking back the power, and if you want to be flirty and funny that’s fine, but always keeping the power and the control in everything.”

Besides her music video, Minaj talks about the natural look she’s been rocking as of late. Her plan was to strip away the wigs and outrageous outfits by the time she got to album No. 3, which comes out next month. “I thought, I will shock the world again and just be more toned down,” explains the 31-year-old Queens native. “I thought that would be more shocking than to keep on doing exactly what they had already seen.”

Watch Kevin Hart in a new episode of Real Husbands of Hollywood every Tuesday, 10P/9C.

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(Photo: Mark Seliger for GQ Magazine)