Nicki Minaj in the New 'Starships'

The Anthony Mandler-directed clip released Thursday evening is about as coherent as the song itself, a dizzying RedOne-produced club banger that makes up with catchiness what it lacks in originality. Of course Minaj riffs on the song's title, with computer-generated spacecrafts delivering a bikini-clad Nicki to a secluded beachfront where men with uncomfortably pillowy pecs greet her in some sort of tribal-lite ceremony. She's an alien... but she's a sexy alien.

The video gets progressively trippier as it goes on, with kaleidoscopic effects rendering each of Nicki's thrusts and gyrations in candy-colored multiples. Nicki's in full pop tart mode for this one, but it's worth noting that she's not the one carrying out any of the choreography. No: She lets the scantily-clad firedancers do all the heavy lifting.