I am invisible, understand, simply because people refuse to see me,” explains the protagonist in another famous work of fiction, Ralph Ellison’s “Invisible Man,” which was published sixty years ago this month. “Invisible” can mean unseen, but just as often it speaks to others’ inability to see beyond something, or someone. The renaming of Rue as “some black girl” is a version of this, as is the pursuit and murder of the seventeen-year-old Martin, who, by some accounts, was shot dead by the self-professed neighborhood watchman of an Orlando-area community because all George Zimmerman could see was that he was young, male, and black.

As the double-dutch you see being played at the beginning of the video makes clear, “Stupid Hoe” is very much supposed to be bratty and adolescent, the equivalent of coming into a Lincoln-Douglas debate and, when it’s your turn to respond, pelting everyone with eggs and running out of the room in search of something more fun to do. But within this mode, it’s not angry. Instead, it’s cuttingly comedic without ever breaking character. I’m 99% sure Nicki lovingly imitates Joan Rivers at one point (compare her expression and hair at 0:50 to Joan non-lovingly imitating a starlet) but you never think “oh, that’s Nicki Minaj telling us she’s imitating Joan Rivers.” Her style is so overwhelming (represented here by the seizure-inducing jump cuts that match the energy of the music perfectly) that it conquers the senses and opens you up to these different modes of expression.

Which is to say that Nicki Minaj is not interested in putting out your diss track.