Keeping it old-school

Nicki Minaj

Queen Universal UNEASY lies the head that wears Nicki Minaj’s crown.

That’s the prime takeaway (whether or not she intended it to be) from Queen, on which the most commercially successful female rapper in history spends so much time describing her dominance that a clear conclusion is that she fears it’s beginning to erode.

And why wouldn’t she? Always a fast-moving genre, hiphop has only sped up its evolutionary pace in the four years since Minaj’s last album, The Pinkprint.

In 2014, few at rap’s centre were worried about competing with Post Malone; fewer still identified Cardi B as a legitimate threat.

Now, of course, the latter is as big as they come, with a hit debut and a streaming-and-radio smash in ILikeIt that many view as the song of the summer.

But it’s not just the names that have changed in hip-hop; so too have the routes to success.

And on Queen, Minaj, 35, continues to put her faith in the old way of doing things — even if listeners, as she surely knows, couldn’t care less about some of them.

The fuddy-duddy stance — thou shalt rise from the streets and compose by hand with paper and pen — feels bitterly defensive, even when Minaj lives up to her boasts about her hard-won craft, which on Queen is almost all the time.

In the sly Barbie Dreams, built on a funky guitar lick familiar from its appearance decades ago in a song by the Notorious B.I.G., she cleverly (and unprintably) flips the earlier track’s conceit to make fun of Drake and 50 Cent, among other male rap stars.

And she sounds as fierce as she has in years on Coco Chanel, which closes the album with a spray of furious dancehall beats and a thoroughly imposing cameo from Foxy Brown.

What’s strange about Minaj’s preoccupation with these outmoded values is that it hasn’t squelched — or been squelched by — her forward-looking instinct.

More than any other rapper at her level, she’s at ease shifting between rap and pop; for her, it’s never been a sacrifice of her credibility to sing airy melodies over sleek electronic grooves, as indeed she does here in Nip Tuck, about a protracted breakup, and the disarmingly tender Come See About Me, in which she pleads with an ex to reconsider their relationship.

Minaj’s willingness to switch styles (and her ability to follow through on it) is the thing likely to keep her on top as hip-hop keeps advancing.

On Queen, though, all the backin-my-day stuff suggests a lack of confidence in her unique sense of perspective.

Ditto several recent missteps, including a widely publicised dustup after a fan gently criticised her on Twitter and her baffling decision to collaborate with the 22-year-old Soundcloud-rap star 6ix9ine, who pleaded guilty in 2015 to using a child in a sexual performance.

Much of what endangers Minaj’s supremacy she can’t help. But some of it she can. – Mikael Wood/Los Angeles Times/ Tribune News Service

Jason Mraz

Know DURING a recent interview with Jason Mraz, the singer-songwriter told Star2 that his new album is “in alignment with everything else” he has produced, and to expect “more love songs and more good nuggets of wisdom to keep us happy and healthy”.

Oh boy, he wasn’t kidding. Mraz’s music has always been quite positive and happy in nature, but Know, which dropped last Friday, really is overwhelmingly so, almost to the point of self-parody. Not that this is a bad thing though – god knows we need more good vibes to tide us through this increasingly turbulent world.

Mraz opens the album with Let’s See What The Night Can Do ,a sweet, elegant love song that doesn’t over-complicate matters (“I wanna get lost with you, and see what it’s like to spend the whole night with you, just you” he sings), then follows it with the hope-filled mantra of Have It All, arguably his catchiest song since I’m Yours. Another stand-out track is Unlonely, which harks back to Mraz’s early pseudo-rap tunes like The Remedy or Curbside Prophet. The familiar-but-not-quite vibe throughout the album works for the most part, but not all the time – More Than Friends, featuring Meghan Trainor, is not as memorable as, say, Lucky (his hit duet with Colbie Caillat), while Love Is The Answer probably pushes the whole positive vibe a little bit too far. All in all, if you’re a fan of Mraz in the first place, you’ll definitely enjoy this album. If you’re just a casual listener, however, the overly feel-good vibe might be a little tiresome to bear after a couple of spins. Then again, isn’t that what Mraz’s music has always been like anyway? — Michael Cheang