Review Summary: Stop trying so hard to be something epic.
Being the claimed "Lady Gaga of rap," the 25 years young Nicki Minaj has a lot to live up to. Born as Onika Maraj, the Trinidadian rapper had a rough early life. As a child she lived with her grandmother because he father was a raging alcoholic and was abusive towards Onika and her mother. According to interviews, the soon to be-Minaj would create many imaginary friends and alter egos to channel her emotions, one of these alter egos spawned the rappers nickname, Nicki Minaj. Upon moving to New York, Minaj spent her adult time working in restaurants and pursuing a music career. Her life was forever changed when she was introduced to rap star, Lil Wayne and became somewhat of a protégé to him. Under his wing (and his Young Money record label), Nicki's rapping career expanded into releasing a few subpar mixtapes and being featured on songs of a few big names.
By the time 2010 came around, Nicki Minaj was a household name without even releasing an album yet. Her rapping style of sometimes high, sometimes higher pitched vocals added a somewhat unique twist to a genre that usually does not hold much variety, not to mention she was one of the first chart topping female rappers in just short of a decade. Finally, Nicki Minaj's long awaited first official album was announced. Released on November 19,
Pink Friday was Minaj's chance to show that she was not just a fluke and that she was more than just sex appeal with an interesting voice. Ultimately
Pink Friday fails that mission, being an overall bland and uninteresting mess of an album that tries too hard to be so much more.
Opening with "I'm The Best," this song is debatably the most important of the album since it is the very first taste of Minaj, just Minaj, with no featured artists or anything of the sort. The track opens with some big band sounds effects and strings, creating an interesting beat to work with. The vocals work pretty well with it all, but generally lacks some of the energy that we saw on her featured tracks, like her wonderful few verses on Ludacris' "My Chick Bad." The most notable aspect of the song is its obvious pop-flair, almost slipping away from her hip-hop roots.
The hip-hop bounces back fast though with the following song, "Roman's Revenge (featuring Eminem)," the name coming from one of Minaj's alter egos. The song is by far the most interesting, musically and lyrically, of the album and is also the most straightforward rap piece. The song makes use of the string effects seen on the previous tracks and mixes it with some real subtle drumming, the majority of the focus put on the opening lines, "I am not Jasmine, I'm Aladdin/So far ahead, these bums is laggin'/See me in that new thing, bums is gaggin'/I'm startin' to feel like a dungeon dragon/Raah, raah, like a dungeon dragon." The song flows quite nicely into Eminem's very rough cut vocals featuring some of his classically vicious raps like, "I ain't finished blowin' it, nice bra/Hope it'll fit a tough titty, bitch/Life's hard, I swear to God, life is a dumb blonde white broad/With fake tits and a bad dye job." Being dirty and controversial, what more would you expect from a duo like Nicki Minaj and the real Slim Shady?
The album continues from there just as you might expect. Not well. From the incredibly nasty song "Did It On'Em," which is quite literally about Nicki "pulling out her dick" and "pissing on'em." Maybe her and Gaga are alike in more ways than we know. After that there is the incredibly cheesy song called "Fly (featuring Rihanna)" but it is more like "Fly (featuring Nicki Minaj)" being that Rihanna is the only one of the two that stands out. Not even the collaborations could save this album, even the song "Blazin (featuring Kanye West) sounds so lazy and tired it hurts. West and Minaj both sound half asleep as they try to sing and rap. Or there is the single, "Check It Out (featuring will.i.am)" which generally is a fairly good song, being really upbeat you can feel Minaj's fun side coming out. Will.i.am's part in the song though, completely ruins what could have been an amazing. What did we learn here? Will.i.am is just not good, from his over autotuned voice and his sorry attempts at rapping, it's time to wrap it up Will.
Overall,
Pink Friday is probably exactly what one would expect it to sound like: subpar collaborations, overused samples, semi interesting beats, all mixed with a few moments of actual decent rap thrown in by Nicki Minaj. The album is totally and completely average. That being said, unless Nicki can pull some amazing songs out of her oversized ass on her next album, maybe it is best if she just sticks to being featured in songs of artists much better than her.
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