Review Summary: I am the female Weezy
Young Money protégée Nicki Minaj is practically omnipresent in modern pop and hip-hop music, so her relatively quiet streak as of late was a bit of a surprise. Appearance on Jessie J's 'Bang Bang' aside, there were very few huge singles featuring Onika Maraj last year. This is mystifying primarily because, from 2009 onwards, her singles have been so enormously popular. 2011's singles 'Starships' and 'Pound the Alarm' (from her sophomore effort
Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded) dominated charts so heavily that their fusion of EDM thump and her bizarre, schizophrenic vocal delivery seemed to engrain themselves within a multitude of popular culture. She has provided an almost innumerable amount of guest verses and pretty much kills every one, including her immortal verse on Kanye West's 'Monster'. But despite her enormous success, she is more or less portrayed as one big joke by the media. Of course, her flamboyant dress sense and very open attitude towards sex might affect sensitive neckbeards, but really the only things they've done is made even her less memorable songs bona-fide classics.
But here, Minaj isn't the crazy, split-personality type character we've grown to love. On opener 'All Things Go', her typical sass is still there, but she doesn't launch into a slew of profanity involving male genitalia, instead lamenting abortion, the death of family and other morose subjects.
The Pinkprint is by no means the first to deal with the emotions of a more 'serious' Minaj but it's the first to deal with her real life, outside of the usual 'rags to riches' stories of
Pink Friday or the glorified party anthems of
Reloaded. 'Anaconda' is the song here sounding anything like either album, thanks to a well implemented sample and frankly hilarious lyrics about her bodily assets. It's a brilliant song that almost missed the mark with her fanbase and incurred so much rage from so the same basement-dwellers I mentioned earlier that it makes me very happy to see, especially with a video that is such a blatant parody of the fat-shaming she has been a victim of in the past.
It's obvious satire, and though the skinny shaming that happens in the exact same track on Maraj's behalf leaves a bad taste in the mouth, this album is all about Nicki Minaj as a person, and she's really doesn't hold back any lyrical themes at all this time round. But the main issue with this record is not the music itself, it's that it doesn't work well at all as d defining statement of intent. The mere fact that I've called Minaj so many names already in this review reflects that I don't think even she knows who she really is. 'Only' sees her adopt a sort of kinky dominatrix persona, announcing boldly her refusal to sleep with anyone in the music industry while boasting about her sexual endeavours. The guest verses from Drake and Lil Wayne are awful and in no way suit the song, but the hook is smooth and the beat is inoffensive trap, a less interesting cut and what feels like a leftover from the more hip-hop influenced side of
Reloaded. The real treasures of this album lie in 'confessional' Maraj, the beautifully sung 'I Lied' and the Meek Mill-aided autotune fest 'Buy A Heart'(built upon a haunting Alicia Keys sample). Both deal with a fracturing relationship, a theme that was undoubtedly going to appear here thanks to Minaj's real life heartbreak.
There's no doubt whatsoever that Minaj can make some of the best pop songs of whatever year she decides to release them in, and 'The Crying Game' with Jessie Ware is one of those. Though it's quite scraped together in sound, its bubbling keyboards and guitar-driven hooks make the album well worth visiting even when it seems to take a dip in quality. This is much, much more than just another Minaj record. She's nowhere near as crazy as she used to be, and her approach to lyrics seems less likely to offend, but she's one of the best rapper sin the business, knows how to integrate herself into almost any beat and always picks a wonderful hook to make for an excellent single. Another brilliant example is 'Pills N' Potions' which easily rivals Rihanna or even Beyoncé in terms of pure pop perfection and sports a fragility unseen in most popular music.
With only a couple of duds across this content-heavy album, this is her greatest effort to date and a statement of her intentions not as an artist, but as a real person, something that a lot of people tend to forget about attractive 20-something pop stars. Nicki Minaj is back, and her reign as hip-hop's queen is only just beginning.
