Minaj and her alter egos give Garden a makeover
With “Barbie” fever having died down and the Oscars having come and gone, it might reasonably be expected that the overwhelming pinkness of the past year has finally faded into the rearview. But there they were on Wednesday, an arena full of fans — “Barbz,” in fact — filling TD Garden with a rosy haze in honor of a pop star so devoted to the color that the titles of four of her five albums include the word “pink.” It may be a Barbie world, but Nicki Minaj was there to rule as its warrior queen.
This wasn’t hyperbole. Minaj began her second Garden show, following Monday’s, with a computer-generated army of robot Minajes being constructed and dispatched to pinksaturated Gag City, and the performer herself took the three-tiered stage to “I’m the Best” and the rapid-fire and confrontational “Barbie Dangerous.” The musical backdrop — substantially ticking drums, ghostly “X-Files” keyboard whistles, and rumbling bass — created an ominous atmosphere. Even when the songs slowed down, as with “Big Difference” and “Feeling Myself,” her double-time rapping gained additional force over the half-time beats.
Filthier songs like “Cowgirl” and “Anaconda,” meanwhile, weren’t simply about titillation or desire (though they were definitely that). Again and again, Minaj weaponized her sexuality, often making it less about pleasure and more about dominance. Even as one guest after another appeared during “Super Freaky Girl” to offer up their own verses reveling in the dirty things they can and will do, the overall picture was one of six female rappers in a welcoming sisterhood of power.
The headliner was practically a sisterhood unto herself. Minaj’s technical skills remain impressive, but her real strength is her ability to slip in and out of different character voices, often in a single line. It added drama to the performance, especially during a midshow set where she emerged from a series of booths labeled with the names of Red Ruby, Chun-Li, Roman, and other alter egos to perform as them. It culminated in her verse from Kanye West’s “Monster,” which was a virtuoso display of shifting personas. In its way, that was also her Achilles’ heel. Minaj‘s attempts at vulnerability or gratitude — like the defiant, dreamy “Right Thru Me” and pleading “Save Me” — rang hollow. (She claimed that “Starships” was special for Boston as she wasn’t doing it elsewhere on the tour, which was demonstrably false.) It was impossible to tell whether she was engaged in performative sincerity or performative insincerity. It could have been both. And when the Garden throbbed every time the bass dropped in “Starships,” it almost didn’t matter.
Defying the traditional opening support slot, R&B singer Monica appeared unannounced midway through Minaj’s show for a five-song solo set. With the soft-edged devotion of “Why I Love You So Much” and the tinkly adult-contemporary “Angel of Mine,” it seemed like Minaj had outsourced the love songs to her, and her Lauryn Hill huskiness served them well.