So, hey Nicki Minaj. It’s real talk time.

This is kind of an open letter because, honestly, I don’t feel like being all abstract and academic about what I see is a major fucking problem — a life-or-death kind of problem, in fact — and it seems more effective to just call you out by name. Because, seriously, you asked for it.

I remember when I heard you’d be on the cover of OUT magazine. It seemed premature to me — like a two-pronged desperate grab from a magazine that needed a new diva and a new diva that realized how valuable (read: profitable) the gay vote is to Lady Gaga — but I remembered something about how you came out as bisexual at one point, and I thought, well, OK!

But then I read the article — where all of the sudden you “may or may not be attracted to women” — and it began to feel like pandering. Like you wanted to be just bicurious enough to titillate straight men who watch porn and just bisexual enough to make the gays believe that, maybe, in you, we’d actually get our first out hip-hop star. Indeed, you had me excited for about thirteen seconds — until I watched a video interview you did for OUT in which they asked you the simplest of questions: What did you listen to when you were growing up?

You replied: “I remember George Michael.” And then you started singing “Karma Chameleon.”

This was your chance to be real, but you gave yourself away by ignoring the number-one rule of lying: Don’t offer so many details! You could have just stopped at George Michael, but you had to prove how much of a fan you really were by singing a fucking Boy George song. Which leads me to believe that you don’t like either artist very much, and confirms my suspicion that this whole thing was, in fact, a ruse to dupe gay men into buying your album. OUT used you, I know. But you used OUT.

That said, I’m not really mad at you for that. You’re a motherfucking monster according to one of your records, and a monster do what a monster’s gotta do. Or something like that. This letter is actually about “Roman’s Revenge,” and I’m sure you knew that going into this.

It wasn’t even two months ago that you hopped on the It Gets Better bandwagon with a message of hope for your gay fans:

I would encourage my gay fans to be fighters and to be brave. People face difficulties, no matter who you are. I faced difficulties with a lot of things. I face opposition every day, but I didn’t kill myself and now, thank God, I’m here. So I want my life to be a testimony to my … gay fans. I don’t agree that everyone should agree with everyone’s lifestyle. I think that some people aren’t going to agree, but I think that when you’re mean and when you ridicule people it’s a sign of your own insecurities. So shout out to all my Ken and Barbies out there and my girls too; just believe that things will get better and they will. They always do.

I promised real talk, so I’ll give you real talk: You have no fucking idea what you are talking about. I don’t know what your “difficulties” and “oppositions” look like, but I can definitely tell you something about the kinds of problems I had as a closeted gay teenager. Like the way I was literally scared to death of coming out when I was 16 years old because I knew — personally! — of at least three people who hung out within one degree of my social circle that went to jail for killing gay men. Think about that for a second: I personally know people who murdered people just like me, for being like me. I’m going to go out on a limb and say that you didn’t have that problem growing up.

But even still, that’s nothing compared to the psychological warfare perpetuated against young gay people every day. When I was a teenager in the New York City punk rock scene, I listened to loads of records with lyrics about how I was a worthless human being. Like that demo with the song “Faggot Stomp.” Or that Descendents song that had the lyrics, “You suck, Mr. Buttfuck / You don’t belong here.” Or that Bad Brains song that told me that the only way to stop AIDS was to stop gay people, and that the only way to stop gay people was to ask Jah for help. Even the first Beastie Boys album was going to be called Don’t Be A Faggot until someone with greater foresight intervened.

So back to you. Your new album features a duet with Eminem in which he offers the following lyric: “All you lil faggots can suck it / No homo, but I’mma stick it to ‘em like refrigerator magnets.”

Your OUT magazine-approved response, I’m sure, has already been prepared: That wasn’t Em, that was Slim Shady! That wasn’t Nicki, that was Roman Zolanski! We’re all a bunch of character rappers!

So before you go there, let me preempt you with some more real talk: That’s bullshit. It’s bullshit because young gay people do not really believe that Eminem or Nicki Minaj are a couple of functioning schizophrenics who rap for a living. If it were that easy, Clint McCance could have just told Anderson Cooper that his inhuman posts about queer youth were actually penned by Clint McFacebook — his homophobic alter-ego — and all would be forgiven. But that’s not how these things work.

These things work like this: Somebody is going to buy your album on November 23, and they are going to internalize a message about themselves that says they don’t belong, that they are less-than, that not even Nicki Minaj is brave enough to tell Eminem that their lives are worth something. That message will be placed on top of hundreds — maybe thousands — of other messages that, in their sheer volume, seem to drown out any notion of things ever getting any better. They will be driven to a brink of despair that I promise you, Nicki Minaj, you know nothing about.

So it’s late and I’m tired and I’m cursing a lot. But I can’t go to sleep without telling you that the jig is up. You are no better than 50 Cent. You are no better than the Game. And to some extent, they’re actually better than you. Because, hey — real talk! — not even Fiddy would go on the cover of the Advocate to sell gay people a record that calls them a bunch of little faggots. That would be fucked up.