Nicki Tweeted this photo from her upcoming project with MTV, and promises a sneak peek this week.
Monday, November 8, 2010
Music: Rihanna's "Raining Men"
Sunday, November 7, 2010
Nicki Minaj Is No Lady Gaga
This article from AfterElton.com is anti-Nicki, but raises some valid points as to why the author is against her. Check it out and let me know what you think in the comments.
Last September, Out Magazine did a cover story on up-and-coming rapper Nicki Minaj who seems to be poised to follow in the steps of Lady Gaga as the next big female music sensation. With her oversized personality, outrageous costumes, and openly embracing her queer fans, Minaj has won the sort of gay following that tends to help many new stars make it to the next level.I'm not gay myself, so the word doesn't offend me, but I agree with every point the author made. It is a bit strange to have Eminem using the word "faggot" on a Nicki track. I know he's a big artist and she was thankful to be working with him, but she really should've stood up for her gay fans and put her foot down. "No homo" is bad enough, he didn't have to drop the F-bomb, too.
But should gay fans be quite so quick to embrace Minaj? Maybe not.
After first claiming she was bisexual, Minaj took all that back last June in an interview with Black Men magazine. As AfterEllen.com noted at the time about Minaj's recanting her bisexuality, "The last thing we need is another straight woman pretending to identify with our sexuality to lure us as customers or straight men into thinking they are their dream girl."
As if that wasn't enough of a reason to doubt Minaj's gay-positive credentials, last week saw her release a single with Eminem called "Roman's Revenge" from her upcoming album Pink Friday. The graphic song includes sexually explict and violent lyrics, and more of Eminem's well known homophobia.
At one point Eminem raps:
A-a-a-a-all you little faggots can suck it, no homo but I’ma stick it to ‘em like refrigerator magnets
Given that Minal told Out she wanted to bring her gay fans to her next level of success, teaming up with Eminem and performing lyrics like that seems an odd way of doing that or embracing her gay fans. In fact, it feels more like doing whatever it takes to get to that next level.
Even odder is that "Roman's Revenge" is apparently referencing Minaj's alter ego Roman Zolansky. While Out says Roman is a flamboyant gay man, it isn't clear that Minaj has given it that much thought. During the interview, she sort of comes to that conclusion about the persona, but none of the songs featuring "Roman" seem to back that up including "Bottoms Up" with Trey Songz which seems about as gay as your typical rap video full of hyspersexualized heterosexual images. She also refers to "Roman" as being spastic and crazy in an interview she does with Songz.
And why on earth would a gay character perform in a song with Eminnem with those gay-bashing lyrics? In fact the song mostly seems about Minaj staking out her claim as rap music's number one female artist, and any claim of Roman being some kind of gay-alter ego seems to have been made only talking to Out. And what better way to please your gay fans than by claiming you have a gay-alter ego?
To be fair, Minaj did record a (slightly odd) video supporting her gay fans who might be feeling suicidal, and she has gone on record as being grateful for her gay fans. But she also told OUT she hadn't told anyone she was doing the cover and definitely wasn't doing it because she way gay. Given her previous opportunistic faumosexuality and her work with Eminem, it's hard not to feel a little suspicions of Minaj.
Thursday, November 4, 2010
The Problem (Or Not) With Nicki Minaj
Check out Essence Magazine's response to the the Nicki-hating poet that went viral recently (see the dumb hoe here).
Over the weekend, a spoken-word performance of "The Miss-Education of a Barbie" went viral, and added to a growing anti-Nicki Minaj sentiment in the blogosphere. Jasmine Mans, the poetess behind the three-minute "dare" challenged Minaj to step her game up. "You turned your g-spot into a land mine," Mans' accuses to the only mainstream female MC. "There is nothing pedal bike pretty about being broken."
An onslaught of responses accusing Mans of "dissing" Minaj prompted the sophomore University of Wisconsin-Madison student, to clarify on her personal website/
"I do not want Nicki Minaj to be the next Lauryn Hill or MC Lyte, I want her to rap as if women like Assata Shakur and Toni Morrison exist... 'The Miss-Education of a Barbie' is a call to action not only for Nicki Minaj but to all women in the entertainment industry...If we, as an audience, do not hold up a mirror to our artists, then who will?
"On one hand, I'm co-signing every impassioned line Mans' spits, but on the other? Eh... I like Minaj. A lot. But I've avoided writing about her here (and on my personal blog, abelleinbrooklyn.com) for months because I couldn't make sense of my feelings. But I think I've figured it out.
"Because Minaj is the singular female voice in hip-hop, she carries the burden of being everything to everyone, including those of us who still haven't gotten over Hill chucking deuces. (As much as we all say we don't want the "next Lauryn" we do. Problem is, there's only one Hill, and in the decade Hill's been gone, she's been hyped up to a diety of Greco-Roman proportions beyond what any mortal or modern goddess can fill, including Hill.) Minaj's critics get doubly upset that she, as the only woman in her lane, chooses playful and provocative over actual depth. (And yes, Minaj is capable of greater depth as any video of her reveals to be a self-possessed, self-aware woman.)
"We've put the pressure on Minaj of being Badu-deep, but filling our voids is not an obligation for Minaj to shoulder. Her duty is to create her version of art, whatever that is and even if it's all pink everything. We can love Minaj or we can hate her, but it's fruitless to think we can change her into something she's not (or someone we still miss) in order to embrace her."
What do you think about Jasmine's poem and views?
Music: "Roman's Revenge" Original Version
This version has a different chorus that was considered for the final cut, but thankfully was changed to the "Rahr, rahr, like a dungeon dragon" we hear now.
Tuesday, November 2, 2010
Nicki In YRB Magazine
Three years ago, Nicki Minaj sat hunched on a cramped staircase in her native Queens, her crispy black hair tucked behind a pair of chunky gold doorknockers. “Y’all bitches better sharpen ya mothafuckin’ No. 2 pencil – ‘cause I stay on point!” she shouts, waving a brick of Benjamins on reserve for a manicure. The tirade, capped by a pointy acapella freestyle, landed on 2007’s The Come Up DVD, introducing a hardened urbanite with raw, unmined talent.
Ever since her mentor Lil Wayne welcomed her to his testosterone-fueled Young Money gang on the strength of her DVD appearance, the 25-year-old has sped down the hip-hop highway to become the new decade’s first rap diva. Over the past year, Nicki became the first solo female emcee to top the Rap Songs chart since 2002 with the saccharine “Your Love,” effectively ending rap’s estrogen drought. In October, she shattered a Billboard record by becoming the first rapstress to simultaneously land seven songs (a combination of both solo and featured tracks) in the Hot 100 chart and sell a combined 4.29 million copies.
The numbers are on her side, but Judgment Day arrives on November 22, the day her hyped debut Pink Friday hits stores. Earlier this year, her Cash Money cohorts nudged her into the studio to begin cold recording the LP, attempting to capitalize on the buzz from animated verses on Ludacris’ platinum-certified “My Chick Bad” and Young Money’s “BedRock.” Initially, Nicki balked at the demand, worried that her talents were better suited for 16-bar guest contributions.
“I was so afraid to put out an album for fear of failure,” she later admits, stretched across a dressing room couch in a yellow Harajuku Lovers tee and flowing sweatpants. “I wanted to put my album out on Valentine's Day of 2011. And my label was like, are you fucking crazy?”
With a fan base that’s expanded from hip-hop to mainstream pop (even Regis Philbin branded her “the next Lady Gaga” following a performance on his show), Nicki isn’t ditching her aggressive hood past. Pink Friday carefully straddles the line between boisterous hip-hop and glistening pop, boasting an eclectic roster of guests including Rihanna, will.i.am, Drake, Kanye West and Natasha Bedingfield (who appears on “Last Chance”).
Pop has a heavy hand in the full-length, but Nicki panders to the hip-hop sect with the harsh “Roman’s Revenge.” The track, which sports a wobbly electronic beat and saucy lyrics, pairs her gay alter ego Roman Zolanski with Eminem, who also used the beginning stage of his career to rap from the perspective of a character.
“We both have our own world, and we're just colliding. I feel like we're on a freaking collision course or something. But it's very equal,” she explains. “I want a piece of that Slim Shady world because I feel like it may have subconsciously influenced me.”
Fans who have been lured into the Minaj matrix by her mystique will also see a more introspective side of the Harajuku Barbie on the album. Typically on wax, Nicki can flip from pointy and aggressive to British and ditzy over a span of two bars, leaving listeners in the dark about the girl behind the mic. One minute, she’s a squeaky British valley girl like on Mariah Carey’s “Up Out My Face (Remix),” and the next, she’s back to being Roman on Trey Songz’s “Bottoms Up.”
But where she used the bulk of her 2010 recordings to take listeners to metaphor heaven, she strips away the gloss and allows herself to become vulnerable for the first time since her stark 2008 track “The Autobiography.” On “Dear Old Nicki,” for example, she addresses why she changed from the feisty around the way rap chick to female emcees’ saving grace.
“I'm going to talk about my family and a little bit of dysfunction – or I should say, lots of dysfunction. And I'm just going to talk about me and self-searching and why I made the choices [I did],” she says, differentiating between her aliases and Onika Tonya Maraj – her birth name. “Onika is not Nicki is not Roman. People will never be able to figure me out. I can tell you my whole life story from beginning to end, and then tomorrow, I'll be just a different person.”
Her identity is as shape-shifting as her rainbow collection of wigs, but her history is written in stone. Growing up in Queens, New York, a young Onika attended the LaGuardia High School of Music & Art and Performing Arts (of which Fame was based), slinging her first rhyme to impress her next-door neighbor, Jennifer. “I started saying it to everybody,” she says with a giggle. “I thought that they were laughing with me, but they were really laughing at me.”
Reared on a healthy diet of Slick Rick and Doug E. Fresh, Nicki spent her adolescence studying hip-hop and developing a taste for couture from admiring her supportive mother’s fashion expertise (“She was wearing only the flyest shoes and dresses”). But where she spent countless hours locked in her room penning rhymes, hip-hop became a necessary escape from life’s harsh realities. On “The Autobiography,” Nicki details a traumatic episode where her substance-abusing father tried to burn the house down with her mother inside. It was one of the many situations that molded her into the hotheaded firecracker barking on The Come Up DVD.
It wasn’t until she met Wayne that she finally found a strong male figure capable of nurturing her love of rhyme. His oversight on her 2008 Sucka Free mixtape and her breakout 2009 tape not only cultivated her eccentricities, but also stamped her with a co-sign from a member of the hip-hop elite. Under the Young Money skein, the two joined forces with the rest of the squad to release We Are Young Money in December 2009, later earning gold certification for the album and a platinum plaque for “BedRock” in June.
But Nicki quickly learned a harsh lesson. Wayne could only take her so far as a solo artist, and his incarceration this past March left her and the YM camp to their own devices. His absence jolted her, not just on a personal level, but also taught her that making it to the top of the game doesn’t reward with automatic bulletproofing.
“At any given moment, you can experience your last day, whether it's going to come back, as in his case, or whether it's gone forever,” she slowly states, citing Remy Ma as another incarcerated emcee who often crosses her mind. “I can't stop, I don't know when this is going to end. I don't know if this is going to end. I don't know how long I'm going to have.”
The sobering reality put her into beast mode. Her buzz not only grew in the wake of Weezy’s imprisonment, but her willingness to experiment turned her saltiest haters into believers. According to Nicki, her pivotal 2010 moment wasn’t when “Your Love” hit the top of the charts – it was with a show-stopping guest appearance on Kanye West’s “Monster,” a giveaway track where she eclipses Jay-Z, ‘Ye and Rick Ross during a blackout verse.
“That has to be the breakout Nicki Minaj moment. That was my moment,” she says. Nicki laid down the verse after ‘Ye reached out to her through his former arm candy Amber Rose, hopping on a flight to Hawaii where she met up with West and laid down the track’s first vocals. “People paid attention because of who was on it and because I held my own and I stayed true to my crazy animation, and it's like I didn't have to take my fun stuff out. I was able to incorporate Nicki Minaj on a record with Jay-Z and Kanye West. And I think people know that's a difficult task in itself.”
Her success as an emcee has also jostled hip-hop’s gender lines, uncorking the forgotten female rappers of yesteryear. It’s no coincidence that Lauryn Hill returned from self-imposed exile or Rah Digga followed up her 1999 debut with her sophomore album this year. Some female emcees forgoing comebacks, like Foxy Brown, have co-signed Nicki and praised her consistent wins, but artists like Lil’ Kim have blasted Nicki for forgetting to pay homage to past femcees.
“These girls aren't mad at me. They're mad at themselves,” she states, shooting down questions on why she never took Kim’s bait. “[It’s] jealousy, insecurity and being broke. When you haven't capitalized and you see I'm about to capitalize on this shit like it's never been done before, then you're mad at yourself.”
Nicki gets the last laugh. Plotting an international tour for 2011, the baddest bitch in the building is climbing the charts with her singles “Right Thru Me” and the will.i.am-assisted “Check It Out.” Wayne will rejoin the Young Money fam upon his release from prison. All eyes are on the year’s highest achieving female rapper, whose debut album could position her as one of the year’s most successful musicians.
“I know that is a classic album. I have never been this proud of anything in my life,” she says. “I just think that it's such a dynamic body of work. I'm no longer afraid to drop it. Now, I know it's time.”
Saturday, October 30, 2010
Music: "Roman's Revenge"
Released moments ago on iTunes, it's the Nicki Minaj - Eminem collabo we've been waiting for!
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