Raining Men - Rihanna (feat. Nicki Minaj)
I unknowingly bought the clean version Loud, this Friday and to see how editing was I first turned on this song, and well it is edited, but that does not mess up Nicki Minaj’s verse or the rest of the CD too much.
This year has been full of excellent Nicki Minaj guest verses, and this peticular one reminds me be most of “Monster”, where the verse sounds like it was recorded for this song, and is not giving the song a thematic 180 degree spin like “Bottoms Up” and “My Chick Bad” (I have turned around on this song, and even like ”It’s going down…basement”). So, just as Nicki Minaj’s voice is raising higher and higher, the string of rhymes of “Re Re, freely, chili” reaches its peak on ”No for real really”, which is sort questions what was just being said as if just to be sure the last few seconds of rapping had actually just happened. This question is sort of good as Nicki Minaj’s verse normally have to do with haters, money, and some very very random references, so her verses normally are twisting those ideas onto whatever song she is on seeing how well or not it fits on the song and going with it.
Today it is not too hard to hear when a guest verse is just ripped from another song or has nothing to do with the actual song it is on and is just added to have add another name on it (nearly all over packed remixes), but with Nicki Minaj the less the verse has to do with the song around it, the more the song seems to be actually focused around her. Rihanna does not lose control of this song, but Nicki Minaj lets her presence be felt in a way that not even Eminem or Drake do with their verses on Loud. As Drake’s intro on “What’s My Name” can easily be forgotten, and Eminem on “Love the Way You Lie, Pt. II” is hard to miss no matter how much I want to, while Nicki Minaj shows up compliments and slightly throws the song until Rihanna shows back up.
