In 2012 Nicki Minaj finds herself in a similar position to Lady Gaga in 2011. She’s nearing the release of her sophomore album and is well poised to establish herself as one of hip hop’s heavy hitters, not to mention one of the most innovative, shrewd and successful acts in the industry. But she’s also transforming many hip hop stereotypes that have existed for decades: that hip hop artists can only become “crossover” artists when featured on a pop remix for an obligatory rap verse or that hip hop itself is innately masculine and hetero-normative. The changes that Minaj is effecting in the hip hop industry are similar in scope (and in some ways nature) to those that Lady Gaga has attempted for pop, but certain qualities of Minaj’s persona and various emphases she’s placed on her career have been ensuring her success in ways that have hindered or escaped Gaga entirely. 2012 will be for Minaj what 2011 wasn’t for Gaga.
Minaj’s journey into the mainstream
parallels the path many rappers have trodden before her. After
releasing a series of mixtapes between 2007 and 2009, Minaj was
signed to Lil Wayne’s Young Money Entertainment and was
featured in a solo verse on “BedRock,” a monster of a
collaboration which peaked at #2 on the Billboard Hot 100. To
continue building a name for herself, Minaj was featured on a
whopping eight singles before the first single off her debut album
Pink Friday was released. The album yielded eight of its own
singles, yet Minaj was also featured in an additional sixteen tracks
since that time. While collaboration is much more common in hip hop
than it is in pop, I’m unable to come up with an artist that has
been as heavily utilized as Minaj has been in recent years. Even
more noteworthy are her crossovers into the pop realm with her
collaborations with Britney Spears, Rihanna, Willow
Smith, Christina Aguilera and Madonna.
Minaj’s propensity for collaboration
was perhaps a detriment to her early career as it fueled the notion
that she was unable to stand alone as a solo act. Granted that very
well may have been true at the time; few artists have enough
personality, stage presence and confidence to captivate audiences
within their first year of mainstream exposure. However, Minaj has
worked this collaboration to her advantage in several ways. Being
afforded the opportunity to tour in support of Young Money prepared
her well enough to deliver a huge 17-song set as the opening act for
Spears’s Femme Fatale Tour, and these experiences will
undoubtedly benefit her performance when she tours solo later this
year. Collaborating with hip-hop-heavyweights like Ludacris,
Kanye West and Jay Z have cemented her credibility in a
scene that largely depends on it, while her forays into pop have
broadened her fan base even further.
Gaga, on the other hand, made a name
for herself as a solo act from the start. Since her debut she has
only been featured on a handful of tracks by other artists, with the
most successful being “Video Phone” with Beyonce which
peaked at 65(!!) on the Hot 100. The biggest detriment to Gaga
regarding her lack of collaboration isn’t the lack of exposure it
provided her, but rather the polarizing effect it has on her
potential fans. Minaj’s work with Spears converted many of Spears’s
fans into Barbies; meanwhile, Gaga’s only significant work with
another pop artist was with Beyonce, and their two fanbases don’t
overlap enough to even cause much conflict amonst fans. The effect
is that many fans feel they can either be a Spears OR a Gaga fan, a
Rihanna OR a Gaga fan, or a Katy Perry OR a Gaga fan.
Meanwhile anyone can be a Barbie, and this is especially significant
considering the drastic divides that exist in hip hop already.
Another of Minaj’s noteworthy
qualities is her ability to produce epic work without a sense of
pretension. Minaj’s recordings are never single-toned; often
they’re some combination of angry or flirty or witty or
hyper-active, and her vocal delivery is always razor-sharp. In many
ways she’s challenging the manner in which artists have
traditionally rapped, and for all intents and purposes it’s worked
for her. The mode in which she introduces her work is similar to
Spears, often with little introduction and rarely a judgment on its
quality – “this is my single and I very much hope you enjoy it,”
she may as well be tweeting. Chances are that her listeners will
like it, but if they don’t at least the complaint is never that it
was “over-hyped.”
Gaga, on the other hand, is known for
immense aggrandizement of her work. She lauded Born This Way
as the “anthem for our generation,” and it seemed as though each
subsequent single or video release after the title track was the
“greatest work of her career.” She constantly tweets about how
much effort she puts into her craft, and makes sure that every
intent, theme, and reference she creates is understood by her
audience. How could anything live up to this monstrous amount of
hype? Fans undoubtedly appreciate the work that Gaga puts into her
craft, but with the countless tweets and TV appearances and magazine
interviews in which Gaga talks about how she works so hard to
out-do herself, the music eventually seems to feel just like that:
like work. Gaga certainly enjoys this work, but it doesn’t
seem to come to her as effortlessly as it does for Minaj, and at
least in the opinion of this writer good pop music should seem
effortless for the artist -- producers, on the other hand, should
almost always work overtime!
The last trait that Minaj has on her
side is that, in many ways, she’s a natural evolution from her
predecessors. Female rappers who reigned supreme before her, such as
Missy Elliott, Lil’ Kim, Foxy Brown, Eve,
and Queen Latifah, were all flirty, rowdy, inappropriate and
eccentric; Minaj merely takes these traits to the next level while
adding her own personal spin on things. This way she’s able to
remain her own individual while also allowing the small group of
successful female rappers to evolve, and because nothing about her is
alarmingly different or shocking her image and music is relatively
easy for audiences to digest.
The differences between Minaj and Gaga
are blindingly apparent in this regard: Gaga tried desperately from
the start to distinguish herself from her contemporaries (as well as
predecessors, but ask Madonna how well that one’s going). It’s
already been mentioned how this has had a polarizing effect on her
potential fans, but the risk she also took (which ultimately didn’t
pay off) was in evolving her music too quickly. Musical trends in
Top 40 over the past decade have shifted more and more towards
dance-centered records, and while Gaga’s most recent album
certainly fits the bill in terms of the speed (BPM) of its tracks,
it’s simply very difficult for most listeners to dance to a large
number of tracks off Born This Way. Most of what made The Fame Monster hugely successful as a dance pop album is lacking on
Born This Way, such as danceable song production and lyrical
content that listeners can either relate to or have no difficulty
understanding. Apart from distancing herself so far from other pop
artists, Gaga effectively distanced herself abnormally far from her
own self that she introduced to the world in The Fame Monster.
It’s not difficult to envision Born This Way being
successful had Gaga released several albums beforehand, easing
herself into her radically different sound. Because of this it likely
wouldn’t surprise many if her next album were more along the lines
of her first.
Given all that has been explained
above, every sign point towards Nicki Minaj enjoying a wildly
successful year. Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded’s handful of
promo singles and lead single "Starships" showcase a wide
variety of sounds and attitudes that seamlessly expand upon what
Minaj introduced in Pink Friday while still remaining true to
the artist that her Barbz have grown to love. The only thing that
could possibly make this pop enthusiast more excited would be an
appearance by Miss Britney Spears, which rumors say will occur on Dr. Luke-produced bonus track “Masquerade.” But either way, come
April 3, Minaj is sure to slay the world.
Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded is released April 3, 2011.
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