Nicki Minaj has lashed out at YouTube after it issued an age restriction on her latest music video upload of “Likkle Miss Remix”, featuring Skeng.
On Monday (26 September), in a since-deleted Instagram post, the “Super Bass” star shared a screenshot of a letter from the platform informing her that her video “may not be suitable for viewers under the age of 18” per its community guidelines, and had subsequently been age-restricted.
“Imagine this. They restricted my f***ing video but have things a million f***ing times worse on their BOGUS F***ING PLATFORM,” Minaj wrote in the caption.
“This is what they do to keep you from winning while doing ads for other people and posting FAKE FKNG STATS. Because the same people who run YouTube are in bed with a certain record label and management company.”
The video includes a group of people twerking and dancing around Skeng and Minaj while they sing.
In a following post, which has since been deleted, the Grammy-winning rapper continued: “This was done to stop us from getting a lot of views in the first 24 hours. The DUDS at my label allow people to use my videos all the time to promote weak s*** but said we can’t buy promo for my videos.”
“It’s time y’all tell people that you’re in bed with a whole record label & management company!!!!! How long have y’all been playing the numbers game to lie & pretend people are doing ‘good’ when they are not?!?!!”
She added: “How much ad space did these duds purchase to be promoted on my channel in the last 5 years?!??!!!!”
While an age restriction doesn’t inhibit a video from earning monetisation from ads, according to YouTube community guidelines, the video won’t be visible to “users who are logged out, are under 18 years of age, or have Restricted Mode enabled”.
In spite of the age restriction, the music video acquired nearly 800,000 views on its first day (25 September), to which Minaj responded: “They can’t give us back our first 24 hours, can they?!?!!! So mission accomplished.”
At the time of writing, the video has since been viewed over one million times.
