Nicki Minaj - Pink Friday

actually there are loads of great beat switch-ups here - the "beez in the trap" bridge where it actually starts sounding like bees, the bass drop in "come on a cone" etc

am i the only one who is stanning for "I Am Youtr Leader" beng the best track

NICKI DENIM NICKI LINEN is certainly one of the hooks i have stuck in my head all the time now. it's top 5 for sure but as far as best goes, "gun shot" exists

HOV lane is my fav so far yeah, I love that really big timpani hit at the start of the chorus, like the hulk just landed after a 10 story drop

anyway deej I get what you're saying but maybe it's more of an argument for 'the album is dead in 2012'

btw an aventador is apparently a type of lambo

http://www.aventador.com/images/gallery/aventador-3-4.jpg

am i the only one who is stanning for "I Am Youtr Leader" beng the best track

― #yolo contendere (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, April 6, 2012 1:15 PM (56 minutes ago) Bookmark

i would be with you but that ross verse almost ruins the entire song

Listening the album a second time now and it is still jarring when "Starships" shows up, signaling he changeover, even though I knew it was coming.

weezy's guest spot is by far the worst tho

i'd still take it over anything on "champion"

hah I liked jeezy's verse

Champion ain't bad.

nicki's verse on "champion" is so powerful that it enables you to tune out everyone else's

the actual worst songs on this aren't even the poundy poundy stupid redone ones, but the shitty ones you can't even remember. what the fuck is "beautiful sinner"? "fire burns"? does anyone anywhere care?

What does that mean that the highs dont compensate for the lows?

I mean that there aren't enough real highs to call it a "good album", it's like two thirds terrible. But the highs are great, there's a terrific EP in there.

I really hate Weezy's guest verses by the way, especially that sewer bit.

I really have no problem with the "Pound the Alarm"-"Beautiful Sinner" stretch.

day-glo nikki

am i the only one who is stanning for "I Am Youtr Leader" beng the best track

― #yolo contendere (Whiney G. Weingarten), Friday, April 6, 2012 1:15 PM (56 minutes ago) Bookmark

i would be with you but that ross verse almost ruins the entire song
--J0rdan S.

There's nothing wrong with the Ross verse! Reminds me of Jadakiss.

Just heard/watched Beez in the Trap for the first time. Beez in the Zzzzzz more like it. If this is one of the highlights of this album I'll pass. :(

Thread should probably get retitled at this point...

most of the conversation surrounding this album seems to indicate that half of it is great (usually "the rap section"), the rest unlistenable garbage (usually "the pop section"), but actually i found the whole thing to be just kinda-sorta ok. i will agree with people who say it's bloated and tedious, though. oh well, guess i'm gonna cherrypick 'stupid hoe' and 'roman holiday' then. perhaps radio play may eventually win me over to some of the other tracks but at this point i really don't want to listen to this album again.

Beez in the Zzzzzz more like it.

You couldnt have gone with "Beez in the Crap"?

Yeah I'm not really crazy about Beez In The Trap either, I can't help but view it as indicative of an irritating desire to polarise her sound.

the "beez in the trap" hook is kinda indelible - the bit where the beat starts to creak is amazing

just fell into another "gun shot" obsessive loop anyway

i love how nicki & beenie make the most inappropriate lyrics sound so swoony and heart-burstingly romantic on the chorus

MY GUN'LL GO GUN SHOT, GIVE A DEM BLOODCLAAT
vs
I LOVE IT WHEN YUH ON TOP, BUSS A LIKKLE BACK SHOT

nice that he introduced her to his mother

I haven't gotten into that song :/

The bit where everything else melts away and the violins come in just as he introduces her to his mother is wonderful. Best song on the album by an absolute mile.

physical therapy killing it once again

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=smaj6_51zKk

if i GET HIT swingin on a BIG BITCH

YES YES YESSSSS. physical therapy <3

yep.

thoughts on my mind, bruh

http://jordansargent.tumblr.com/post/21220984562/did-nicki-fail-pop-or-did-pop-fail-nicki

idk if you can ever 'fault' the pop marketplace tbh

i think it's okay to fault people for having shit taste

I guess but then you're not really treating it as pop music - you're treating it as music that you really like that happens to also do really well on billboard

whenever nicki's tried to go in that direction beatwise ("massive attack", "stupid hoe") it's resulted in amazing songs but gigantic flops. idk, pop has had shitty production for so long now and it doesn't seem to be ending. i lean towards pop failing nicki rather than vice versa b/c it's not usually incumbent on the singers/rappers to take care of pushing the production envelope - how many of the rappers who made their name over timbaland/neptunes beats would've just gone for whatever's hot if they'd come up nowadays?

jamiecox's remark about Nicki as LBJ got me wondering whether Drake is the Hubert Humphrey of pop.

tbh i have no idea what people feel like they're missing out on when nicki goes pop, it's like they're hanging onto a promise she never actually made to them

I don't know if it's even a valid point. If she scores a top ten hit, then by definition it's pop.

I don't think anyone's complaining about Nicki making pop, just bad pop. xp

it's kind of a moot distinction imo -- even if one of these songs blows up and people belatedly decide it's as great as "Super Bass" they're not gonna change their tune about the album having too much pop

yeah I think there's a distinction to be made between 'pop-style' music and what the Billboard charts tell us today is pop music

then you can argue that the prevailing trends in pop music currently are just really ill-suited to nicki's style, which is what I think j0rd is arguing

it's all pretty fluid... i think she makes a pretty clear distinction w/ her own music between "pop style music" and "rap" -- if the latter bleeds into the pop world, then my handwringing would be unwarranted, but it hasn't really yet

"beez in the trap" might change that! which would be cool, i love that song. and it has enough "look at me now" in the beat that i don't think it's out of the question. but even then it's only one song (or maybe two if you count "did it on em")

tbh i have no idea what people feel like they're missing out on when nicki goes pop, it's like they're hanging onto a promise she never actually made to them

― some dude, Monday, April 16, 2012 3:39 PM (2 hours ago) Bookmark

i guess it's less that i'm hanging onto a promise and more just curious as to what would happen if she had pop producers working with her that weren't all copying the same songs over and over again

there are things going on in her brain that i would like to see applied to pop music that tried and push boundaries musically, not just in terms of how successful she can be as a female MC.

maybe i'm being a bit selfish or rockist, idk -- in any even i'm mostly just talking things out and am probably biased anyway cuz the tim/neptunes era of pop is my fav music

like, maybe she's just not a "good" pop artist anyway (good is obv subjective there, i'm talking about quality not sales, and for the most part i think there's a general consensus among critics that her pop stuff is not very good), but i'd at least like to find out

i guess i'm saying i'm not sure if she's had the right opportunity to prove herself in that regard -- like i'm not gonna begrudge for a second her desire to make as much money as possible and if that means jumping into the crypt with dr luke then by all means, but i guess it's sorta lamentable from an outside perspective that her and we can't have our cake and eat it too

What is responsible for her -- if you will -- crisis? The sound of hit pop music forcing Minaj into not-so-snug jackets? I want to blame The Climate because it's easy. It's also easy but more correct that when Minaj pulls a "Starship" she sounds like Lou Reed singing atop a horn section in 1974: for a tenth of a second fascinating because platinum aspirations magnify her peculiarities?

otoh "Super Bass" Captured The Moment and doesn't sound half so compromised. I think the problem is Minaj herself; she either underestimates her strengths or overestimates her ability to render her peculiarities palatable.

*Starships

And you'd think if there was anyone in the current pop landscape totally capable of having their cake and eating it too, it would be Nicki! xxp

nicki has too much personality to be another fergie

Fergie is all personality.