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E-mail: dalatudalatu@gmail.com

I don’t really think pop needs renovated, in fact I think pop music has never been better, I love like 90% of what’s on the radio right now. it’d be cool to do some production work after the album and contribute to that though. I know Azealia liked ‘Whip It’ by Nicki Minaj so if she’s down to make pop hits then so am I.

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Unicorn Kid, answering the question: “Would you ever make Eurobubblegum dance tracks with Azealia Banks to help renovate 2012 pop?”.

Unsurprisingly this kid is 20, but surprisingly he is only 20. And, a guy that wishes Drake would send him acapellas so he could make a Trance EP is a person I gotta like. 

It's Alive: Did Nicki fail pop, or did pop fail Nicki?

jordansargent:

This isn’t a rhetorical question; I’ve been thinking about it for a bit and still am not sure of the answer, if there even is one. But, now that the fervor over Roman Reloadedhas died down, I think it’s interesting to think about what the album means to pop. Is Nicki currently unable, or maybe unwilling, to navigate the waters of pop without resorting to the lowest common denominator, or is she a woman out of time?

My lasting thought reRoman Reloaded has switched from, “Wouldn’t it be great if she made a whole rap album?” to, “How would this album have turned out if Nicki had people like Timbaland and the Neptunes at her disposal?” My hope would be that if Nicki could work with peak-era Tim or the Neptunes, that the pop that she would create would be much more adventurous, something that bridged the gap between “Beez in the Trap” and the Billboard Top 10. (Or maybe “Beez in the Trap”will do that.) But maybe that wouldn’t happen, or wouldn’t even be possible considering the market.

Nicki is a singular voice in pop, but she’s come up in a time where basically no producers and/or writers are consistently bridging the gap between rap/r&b and pop in a way that doesn’t seemingly make massive concessions. Forget Tim and Neptunes, there isn’t really anyone out there right now that could even hit Nicki with a “London Bridge.” Wouldn’t it be great to hear what Nicki and Pharrell and Chad would’ve done with the “I’m a Slave 4 U” beat?

Whether listeners have pushed what would be (or could be) the next Pharrell out of pop or whether a lack of Pharrells has allowed pop to submit itself to Europe is something I also don’t really know the answer to. Would Nicki over the “Southern Hospitality” or “Gossip Folks” beats be top 20 hits right now? If not, would that be Nicki’s fault? Or would it be the marketplace’s fault? 

I realize I’m sort of creating an alternate universe here that contains an irreconcilable number of variables, but Roman Reloaded leaves me with a lot of questions about pop music in 2012, and a much smaller number that I can answer. At some point, I think the back-and-forth contrarian arguing over whether the pop parts ofRoman Reloaded are “right” or “good” will look silly to us in retrospect, as the next few years of Nicki’s career should help us answer a lot of the questions that we — or at least I — have right now.

Maybe here’s a better way of putting it (or maybe not): despite what you heard on Watch the Throne, it’s really Nicki that’s the LeBron James of pop.

I don’t think there’s anyone at fault with how this album ended up turning out and certainly no pointed blame could be made of the marketplace it was released into. While, it would be great to hear Nicki work with early 2000 Timbaland or Neptunes, I would also love to hear another Outkast album and well we know how likely that is to happen. The music climate is constantly changing, and maybe “Beez in the Trap” could become a Top 10 hit—I certain didn’t hear a Top 10 single the first time I heard “Niggas in Paris” or “Rack City”—but if it doesn’t no one would be surprised. 

The separation of Pop and Rap in 2012 is kind of interesting. A hit Pop song in 2012 is so by the numbers at this point that if Guetta, Dr. Luke, or RedOne on a track one can assume that it is already a Top 40 hit, but who are those producers in the rap world? At least in terms of Top 40 hits, the era of the rap producer reigning supreme has been over for a few years now, and while there are those occational hit cross-over songs, no one producer dominates the rap and pop charts the way someone like Lil Jon was doing nearly a decade ago. Yet, if one did, who knows if they would have produced more than a song or two for this album, because while “I’m a Slave 4 U” is a classic single, it was Clipse and Kelis were getting fully produced Neptunes albums not Britney. 

And to question of whether those previous Neptunes produced single would be hits today: No, they wouldn’t be. Most songs don’t get second lives for a reason, because at least for the general public songs exist in certain period and are popular for a specific circumstance that just cannot be replicated no matter how great or timeless a song might seem. Would “Yeah” by a #1 hit again in 2012, probably not, and I doubt it would even crack the Top 20. 

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”. 

"We Gonna Be Alright If We Put Drake On Every Hook"

This is a Spotify playlist I made of Young Money hits from the last couple years, highlighting their best quality:hook writing. I was going write why I choose each of the songs, but then I remember that I’ve written about a lot of these tracks and if the hooks of “Money to Blow”, “Bedrock”, or “Duffle Bag Boy” are not stuck in your head then my words aren’t going to help. In the case people do listen, I know Lloyd isn’t on Young Money, but “Girls Around the World” has Lil Wayne and might be the best song here and same lack of restriction is why “Super Bass” and “Fancy” are here (love both songs, despite their lack of Young Money affiliated hooks). 

It’s a Pink Friday everyday (and date accuracy is optional). 

It’s a Pink Friday everyday (and date accuracy is optional). 

This is 90% Nicki Minaj Face.

This is 90% Nicki Minaj Face.

Check It Out- Nicki Minaj

Pink Friday probably loses a certain listener about half way through “Fly”. As they wonder what  is this Rihanna song doing on Nicki Minaj’s “rap” album, I would then guess that their interest is regained when they hear Kanye West on “Blazen”, leaving less than half of an album that they would want to listen to or even care about. The reason I am going out on this assumption of what this listener would enjoy is because there is part of me that feels that the rap fans that were caught off guard at by Nicki’s guest verses on “Bottoms Up” and “Monster” and were expecting a whole album of those raps are going to be disappointed. Pink Friday is not that album, and it was never going to be, as it is not striving to be what her guest verses were this year.

One of the problems in wanting an album with rapping that is just like Nicki’s guests verses is that, part of the effectiveness of her guest verses were that they were stealing the spotlight on songs that did not require the spotlight to be taken. “Bad Chick (Remix)” might as well be the original, as the verses by the three female rappers stay on theme of talking about how much of a “Bad Chick” they are. Where Nicki’s verse is still ”bad” but she is seems to be fighting against Ludacris and not just playing into the stereotypes the song is attempting to portray. So even a song with good rapping like “Did It On ‘Em”, is not as effective as her guest verse, because she is carrying the entire song and instead of just appearing for forty-five seconds. The problem Nicki Minaj keeps running into is that you cannot steal the spotlight, when you are the only person on stage.

The middle of the album is where the ballads start appearing, and where I come to terms with enjoying a Will.i.am song that does nearly everything I hate about recent Black Eyed Peas and other radio hits. Nicki Minaj is not a singer, so Auto-Tune comes to the rescue distancing her voice to the point of nearly being a chillwave song. ”Right Thru Me” may have a first person pronoun in the title, but the song sounds like it tale that is even further removed from third person, as if she is retelling a tale from a friend of a friend, as the vocals lack the emotion of another song of hers like “Your Love”. I am convinced that “Check It Out” is placed on the album to challenge its listeners, because at this point of hearing four Nicki Minaj ballads, some may have given up even getting to the song with Kanye West on it. An over use of Auto-tune, one obnoxious sample, and Will.i.am singing the hook should equate to be the worst song on the album, but it isn’t. Nicki Minaj always mentions her Barbies, and this song sounds like it is made for that plastic doll with its overtly poppy shine, the already known song sample in “Video Killed the Radio Star” and the surprising well done production done by Will.i.am.

The last thirty seconds of “Dear Old Nicki” has a little synths outro that represents the overall sound of the album pretty well, as you have these synths that sound goofy and cheesy in 2010, but are featured throughout the entire album, which keep the album from ever sounding too serious. This outro leads to “Your Love”, which is the best ballad that Nicki does on the album, and this may be that it is not clumped in with the other ballads and is given its own space. “Your Love” still has Nicki’s voice sounding as far away from the listener as possible, and is effective in a way similar to 808s and Heartbreak, where Kanye West uses auto-tune to help him sing and distance his voice. Nicki uses is auto-tune for a very similar effect except on her does not sounds a grainy and hurt as Kanye’s did on that album, this effectively smoothes her voice over to a point of not sounding human, which not all that different from the unique personas she has been taking and rapping in the past couple years.

There in may be why this album got such a mixed response, as it pulls and grabs from different popular trends, that are strongly disliked and combined with misplaced expectations can lead to people wanting something that is not going to be happening. Nicki Minaj does have some great raps on this album, the intro and outro ”I’m the Best” and “Last Chance” shows this, hell even “Check it Out” has good lines by her. But, for some reason when people heard auto-tune singing they assumed that a major label must be messing with an artist work instead of it being Nicki Minaj just trying a new vocal style. (Remember that British Accent on “Roman’s Revenge”)

a sort of musical Garfield Minus Garfield

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Download A Nicki Minaj-Centric Version Of Kanye West’s “Monster” With Kanye West Conveniently Removed - New York Music - Sound of the City

check plus!

(via desnoise)

Stripping the song down to just Nicki Minaj’s guest verse misses the point of the “Monster”, and what made Nicki Minaj’s guest verses last year so good. As she would appear on songs like “My Chick Bad” & “Bottoms Up” making the song her own just by her rapping, without having to shrink the song down.

(via desnoise)

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.