Question Mark Exclamation Point

E-mail: dalatudalatu@gmail.com

Stupid Hoe - Greatest Rap Song

Name: David Turner

Age: Under 20

Race: Not White

Gender: Bro

Just giving some background information on myself to provide a bit of context for why I am going to call this the best song created by a rapper ever! In the last few years one of the greatest rapping joys was a Nicki Minaj guest verse: “Bottoms Up”, “Monster”, “Little Freak”, “Dance (A$$)”, and plenty of other singles were all made better by her multiple bottle captures of lightning verses where she’d take over a song in less than 45 seconds. Pink Friday disappointed a lot of people because it was not just her rapping with this known intensity for an hour straight, so critics instead got thrown for a loop with all of the auto-tune singing and love songs that made up most of the album.

Pink Friday: Roman’s Revenge has had plenty of songs released on the build towards the album, and while none of them have stuck on the radio, “Stupid Hoe” with over 30 million views in a few weeks has certainly entered plenty of ears. The much hyped music video definitely has something to do with that, but I don’t think there is all that much interesting happening in the video, because “6 Foot 7 Foot”, also by Hype Williams, was far stupider and more enjoyable to watch, as a poorly done 3-D dog rolling on the ground is hard to top.

Sorry, if I am teasing about talking about the greatest song ever, so let’s get into it. “Stupid Hoe” produced by Philadelphia DJ, DJ Diamond Kuts (even if the official credits go to her real name T. Dunham), is a rapid-fire assault that thought “A Milli” was too boring yet still understood that its minimalism was a good path for future rap production. This allows Nicki Minaj to rap with no regard to a consistent flow, as every few lines it slows up, speeds up, and by the end of the song she is fucking singing. As a whole, the song sounds like a blend of four or five different songs smashed together with little regard to how it might sound on the radio or really anywhere, which makes it great no matter the context its heard. 

“(Run the World) Girls” was probably a terrible idea as an opening single for Beyonce’s latest album 4, because it was pretty damn weird, but its mix of maximalism and minimalism certainly fits better on the radio today than it did just a year ago. The song sounded great on rap stations when placed near overstuffed Lex Luger beats and it would have been great right next to its sonic cousins of “Dance (A$$)” and “Niggas in Paris”. “Girls” certainly had way too much going, and “Stupid Hoe” similarly has three or four too many things happening. But, the vocal shifts effectively capture the greatness of Nicki Minaj’s guest verses as she contorts and changes her voice and verse to fit the song best, and since she cannot be a guest on her own song this is a good approximation of the effect. This captures the high of her “Monster” verse without stripping it from the original song that made it so great, because she formed a song that can highlights her own verses contrasted with her singing, “woo” yelps, and even small talking bits. 

The song is apparently a diss track towards Lil Kim, which it in itself is uninteresting, because who cares about diss tracks anymore. But, this gets us to the title of the song “Stupid Hoe” and the actual lyrics of the song. The funny thing about Pink Friday is the best lyrics on the album are probably on the auto-tuned love songs and not the straight up rap songs, because when rapping Nicki Minaj, she focuses on the style and technique it seems over the actual words she is saying, where the songs like “Super Bass” and “Your Love” is where the real heart of her music can be found.

Nicki Minaj ends the song calling herself “the female Weezy”, which is a bizarre claim as she has displayed an artistic control over herself that Lil Wayne has never shown, and this even extends to how each of them rap. The usual style over substance heard in Lil Wayne’s work, I feel has plenty of roots in the fact he never stops recording music and he hits on the same topics over and over again. Minaj might see herself in a similar mold, except she completely owns this idea and lets style and presentation run wild in her appearances, songs, and videos. While, Lil Wayne has never shown that type of artistic control of his work, and probably has no interest in doing so, which is probably why his best loved work are mixtapes have the biggest rap DJs in charge of them. To proclaim something the greatest anything is plenty stupid, and calling this the best rap song ever, when I doubt I would hold up any of the lyrics of the song is probably even stupider. But, the goals and ideas that Nicki Minaj has been aiming for could not be better represented in this three and a half minute song of air horns, high-pitched screams, various styles of singing, and somehow I forgot calling someone a “Stupid Hoe”. 

  1. dalatu posted this