Pink Friday: The Making of a Hip Hop Superstar

The numbers are in for the opening week sales of Nicki Minaj’s highly anticipated debut album Pink Friday.  The artist’s buzz going into her November 19 release was astronomical by any standards (to find anything comparable among female artists, you’d have to go back to 1996’s The Miseducation of Lauryn Hill).  However, despite the buzz, a lot of people were still on the fence as to whether it would translate into actual album sales, or if it was merely the result of a fleeting fascination with Minaj’s over-the-top, ostentatious persona and matching rhyme style.  But after debuting at #2 on the billboard charts (second only to the powerhouse that is Kanye West) with first week sales of 375 000, most of the doubts have been soundly put to rest.

After listening to the album over the weekend, it’s clear to me that the props she’s garnered over the past year are well-deserved.  The album is solid, and while I wouldn’t describe it as “amazing” or “classic” or any of the other all-too-ubiquitous superlatives common to hip hop parlance, the album does a really good job of displaying Minaj’s many talents.

On most of the tracks, Minaj lives up to her reputation as a master of the sixteen-bar verse.  She aggressively and adeptly attacks the beat and she frequently laces her rhymes with clever wordplay (punchlines and multis for all you hip hop geeks).  Of course there’s no shortage of the signature Nicki cadence, where she frenetically plays with the pitch and volume of her voice.  I personally haven’t grown tired of it yet, but you can only rely on those types of tricks for so long before they start to come across as annoying and gimmicky.  Apparently having recognized this, she appears to tone it down on many of the tracks.  But the thing that surprised me most about the album was the singing.  I had never pegged Minaj as having a particularly good singing voice, nor did I think she was very good at creating melodies, but on tracks like “I’m the best” and “Moment 4 Life” I was impressed on both fronts.

My main criticism of the album is that it sounds really pop-y in a lot of places.  This is especially true for the singles she’s released so far, “Your Love”, “Right Through Me”, and “Check it Out” featuring Will.I.Am (it doesn’t get any more pop than that).   I suspect she felt the need to play it safe after having dropped the fairly experimental “Massive Attack” back in April along with a high-budget video, only to have both the song and the video flop hard among both critics and fans.  Not surprisingly the song didn’t make it onto the album.

Perhaps also due to the relatively risk-averse selection of beats on the album, it fails to establish a signature sound for the artist.  As original as she is with her flow, there’s nothing that really stands out about her musical accompaniment.  Unlike other recent heavy hitters such as Drake, Rick Ross, and Kanye, there’s nothing in any of the beats that would make a listener say, “that’s definitely a Nicky Minaj track.”

As a dynamic female emcee, Minaj represents a welcome addition to the mainstream hip hop scene, and she’s well aware of the void that her presence is helping to fill.  She appears to have a strong grasp of the sexism and overall gender dynamics that govern success in hip hop.  This was evident in her one-hour MTV-produced documentary special “My Time Now”, which aired over the weekend to coincide with the release of the album.  In it, Minaj waxes articulately about the fine line a female rapper must walk in trying to be assertive to avoid being taken advantage of, while also being careful not to be labeled a “bitch”.  You have to be impressed by her ability to navigate her way to the top of such a patriarchal industry through talent, grit and savvy, and then to speak so eloquently about her own struggle and the need for female empowerment, as she often does.

It’s for this reason that I’m having a hard time deciding just how I feel about one particular song on the album.  On “Roman’s Revenge” Minaj delivers a lyrical opus and, in my opinion, manages to outshine Eminem, who’s also featured on the song.  As she often does, she goes hard at other female emcees, whom she sees as her competition (although not very stiff competition according to Minaj).  I personally don’t have a problem with the fact that she speaks about violent and aggressive acts she plans to unleash on her female colleagues, since, for any male artist, this would be considered par for the course.  But when Emimem comes in and talks just as aggressively about inflicting violence on some unspecified female target, I felt that crossed the line in a way that Nicki Minaj should have vetoed.

However, in spite of my few reservations, I genuinely enjoyed listening to the album.  It’s rare that an artist comes along and piques your curiosity.  Nicki Minaj is one of those artists.  When I hear that she’s released new material, I look forward with anticipation to hearing it just to see what she does with it and to find out in what direction will she decide to push the envelope.  For me, the album lived up to the hype and I can only assume that she’ll get even better as she continues to grow as an artist.  I look forward to her future projects.