Nicki Minaj is back in stores with her 4th studio album ‘Queen’, showcasing her jewels with signature sass. She hails from the powerhouse label Cash Money Records, home to heavyweights Drake, Lil Wayne and Young Thug.
The artwork features Minaj delicately clad in Egyptian wear, perched across a lurching trunk like an alluring anachronism of modern rap. Inside, the album presents a consistently weighty project, notching 20 tracks with the last minute clout-boosting addition of Takeshi 6ix9ine’s ‘Fefe’. Snappy, braggadocio rhymes moonlight alongside NBA namedrops with expectedly behemoth features in Future, Eminem, Ariana Grande, Lil Wayne and The Weeknd.
‘Majesty’ serves as a kickstarting highlight. The contrast of steady keys, raw drones and soft melodics are crisp and accommodating for guests Labrinth and Eminem. In uzi-quick fashion he delivers a superb showing beneath mention because if you aren’t giving Eminem flak in 2018 are you really reviewing music?
Like Em, Minaj has proven to be at her best in full-gear beast mode. Her British alter-ego Roman Zolanski has been retired and is said to have been sent to boarding school with Slim Shady, though Minaj is charismatic enough to triumph without. Flashes of Caribbean steal drums (‘2 Lit 2 Late’), slow R&B (‘Come See About Me’) and a Metro Boomin beat (‘Sir’) can be buttery enough to harbour the danger of sliding ‘Queen’ deep into the commercial melting pot. Yet, Minaj’s sharp wit and flare heroically propel the project to more excitable realms.
Queen is Minaj’s fourth studio album
What riled music outlets more than ‘Queen’ itself was the social media upset that tailed its release. Controversy stirred when Nicki couldn’t budge Travis Scott from his second week at Billboard’s No.1. She tweeted accusing Spotify of suppressing the album’s visibility in retaliation for a premature radio unveiling, and wasn’t shy to attribute the success of Scott’s ‘Astroworld’ to little more than the Instagram aid of promotional juggernaut Kylie Jenner. Twitter outcries aside the comparable works warrant a little frustration on Nicki’s side.
Over the years her sound hasn’t developed too far from its synth-pumped debut. The candy-coat has been given a revamped gleam of 808 hats and delayed flows over the 4-year pitstop since her last output. To her fiery attitude the process hasn’t left a scratch. Still, the accolade is habitual with a style as malleable as hers, and it isn’t without the wincing contradiction between Minaj’s homage to hip-hop culture (‘Barbie Dreams’) and her actual function within it (‘Bed’).
The former’s take on The Notorious B.I.G.’s classically raunchy ‘Just Playing’ is hilarious, bizarrely humbling and apparently welcome. Yet the actuality that an empty love ballad lulled in-hand with Ariana Grande will always dominate – currently by nearly 10x more with 110m streams on Spotify – is a grounding example of her more trivial role in rap.
She might be more vibrant than Rapsody or Rah Digga, to exhaust comparisons for the sake of sex, though more relevant is her versatility over commercial lady-hulks Cardi B and Iggy Azalea. When you strip back the award-show frenzies and sonic gloss, Nicki can still compete lyrically where contemporaries would cower defenceless, hoping their gold grills catch the sun at just the right angle to blind her fluttering eyes long enough to escape.
Author: Joe, Exeter Store
It is an awesome album.
I love you Nicki.