NICKI FIT TO 'PRINT'
Newly vulnerable Minaj goes beyond booty by adding pop
News flash: Nicki Minaj has needs. On the Queens-reared rapper’s third album, she straightens her famously strange expression and spits some vulnerable truth. In “I Lied,” the star admits the only reason she keeps denying she loves a guy is to keep him “from breaking my heart.”
In “Favorite,” she says she wants the primary role in a man’s life, while in “The Crying Game” she emphasizes that she really wants “to love and be loved” — even more than having a brilliant career.
It’s a striking move into sincerity for a woman who launched her career with a persona that landed at the far end of cartoonishness, even by hip hop’s wacky standards. On the other hand, the change reflects the prerogative, and new confidence, of a woman who deservedly declares in one new song, “I’m still the highest-selling female rapper, for the record ... I don’t got to compete with a single soul.”
In a commercial sense, she does need to compete. Especially given the popularity and resonance of her strongest competitor, Iggy Azalea. Aspects of “The Pink Print” show Minaj understands this well.
It’s the most pop-friendly album of her career — apt for evening the playing field with teen-adored stars like Azalea. Before the release of “The Pink Print,” Minaj told interviewers that her new music would bring her back to her harder, hip-hop roots. In fact “Pink” features friendlier melodies and more singing than ever.
Minaj can rap rings around Iggy, but here she shows it less often. She’s more attuned to the craft of the song than the complexity of the verse. Only a few songs approach the velocity or eccentricity of the rapping in past songs, like the brilliantly dense “Stupid Hoe.”
You’ll find some of the fastest and zaniest rapping in the early single “Anaconda,” which loses points for oversampling Sir Mix-a-Lot’s classic “Baby Got Back.” There’s also quick work in the album’s one nod to Minaj’s Caribbean roots, the sprightly “Trini Dem Girls,” with guest Lunch Money Lewis.
In her song with Beyoncé, “Feeling Myself,” ” the two undulate throughthr roughg a cheeky ode to masturbation. The song sounds like the natural followup p to their recent “Flawless” remix.
More often, the edgier moments ents come in the sheer terseness, and tartness, of the rhymes. “Got a bow on my panties/cuz my ass is a present,” she teases in “Get on Your Knees.” ” Even here, the music leans heavily toward pop, with a soaring chorus voiced by Ariana ana Grande.
In songs like ke “The Night Is Still Young,” and the iTunes-only bonus song “Truffle Butter,” Minaj hedges further, offering ring music that further mainstreams s EDM. The latter track has an irresistible hook, and features a guest rap from Drake ke that both upstages Minaj and presents a faster r than usual flow from the Canadian rapper.
For all the album’s fun, it keeps returning to heartache, evidenced ed in a song like “Bed of Lies.” It features both an elaborate, and very hurt, rap from rom the star. There’s also a chorus from m Skylar Grey that’s so feminine it wouldn’t be out of place on a Lilith h Tour.
Disappointingly, “Pink” nk” hasn’t taken Minaj furtherher into the surreality that first promised to turn her into nto Missy Elliott to the 10thth power. But there’s no denying the album’s catchiness. And in terms of growth, “The Pink Print” goes a long way toward making Minaj’s character as fully rounded as her figure.