![]() ![]() back on her game new talents such as Azealia Banks, Angel Haze, and Iggy Azalea have emerged and an echelon down from them, there’s room for everyone from Sasha Go Hard and her all-female Chicago cohorts to Tumblr truth-teller Kitty (formerly Pryde) to Awkwafina, who won over the web with a series of hilarious music videos. Three and a half years later, “Moment 4 Life” has grown on me, and the landscape for women in hip-hop looks a bit brighter: last year’s Matangi found M.I.A. It was frustrating to see a performer who’d been hyped as the next great female emcee take her place among the Gagas and Katy Perrys of the pop stratosphere - not because pop is qualitatively inferior to hip-hop, but because it had been so long since a woman rapper had broken through to the mainstream. Hit single “Moment 4 Life” even imagined Minaj and Drake’s wedding, with a video that blew up that fantasy to fairy-tale proportions. Built on the success of her Annie Lennox-sampling surprise hit “Your Love,” it was more pop than hip-hop - and the pop moments were unmistakably girly. For an emcee who built her reputation on wild mixtapes and guest verses in which she bested whichever male rapper was secure enough to share a track with her, Minaj’s 2010 debut album, Pink Friday, seemed like a sellout move. I spent a long time being disappointed by Nicki Minaj, pop star. It’s as soft as we’ve ever seen her, but the meditative maturity of it resonates. What’s most unusual is that Minaj, who is so often showily combative, seems so zen and forgiving about it all: “I still don’t wish death on ’em/ I just reflect on ’em,” she raps. Luke-produced ballad of whispers and coos that sneaks in a few rap verses amid the shimmering tambourines and shapely percussion and a hook that insists, “I still love.” The lyrics hint at a pastel-tinted Valley of the Dolls lifestyle - sad, highly medicated glamor maintained despite a lover’s betrayal (of sorts) and the fickleness of hangers-on. The first single from her upcoming album, The Pink Print, is a Dr. About 30 seconds into her new song “Pills N Potions,” I realized I was no longer holding out for Nicki Minaj’s big hip-hop hit. ![]()
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