Miley Cyrus has twerked her way into headlines recently, but has had little opportunity to share her side of the story. However, she got her chance in this month’s Rolling Stone, talking the VMAs and the unlikely mentor she found in Kanye West.
Cyrus has received an outpour of backlash for her now infamous VMA performance, where she twerked against Robin Thicke and paraded in a nude bikini, but she said it could have been racier.
“Honestly, that was our MTV version,” she said. “We could have even gone further, but we didn’t. I thought that’s what the VMAs were all about! It’s not the Grammys or the Oscars. You’re not supposed to show up in a gown, Vanna White-style. It’s supposed to be fun!”
While she admitted the performance got a little “handsy,” she said that she was concerned about the criticism around her and not the person on the receiving end of the twerk.
“No one is talking about the man behind the ass. It was a lot of ‘Miley twerks on Robin Thicke,’ but never, ‘Robin Thicke grinds up on Miley.’ They’re only talking about the one that bent over. So obviously there’s a double standard.”
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The critics also slammed her for a serious issue: racism. Critics accused her of cultural appropriation and using black women as props. Cyrus, however, sees it differently.
“I don’t keep my producers or dancers around ’cause it makes me look cool,” she said. “Those aren’t my ‘accessories.’ They’re my homies.”
She also said that people now expect her to twerk with her tongue out all the time, but added that she’ll “probably never do that shit again.”
Cyrus also shared that she was also approached by someone who can relate to heavy backlash due to a VMA performance: Kanye West. She said that after viewing some of her rehearsals, he went to meet her backstage.
“He came in and goes, ‘There are not a lot of artists I believe in more than you right now,'” she recalled. “The whole room went quiet. I was like, ‘Yo – can you say that again?!’ I just kept repeating that over and over in my mind, and it made me not nervous.”
Cyrus appears topless, tongue free from mouth on the cover of this month’s Rolling Stone, where the full interview is available.