Nicki Minaj - The Pink Print (2014)

praying some reporter bridges the gap between "i wanted to teach the children through a dense tapestry of iconography" and "he got the idea from metalocalypse"

where are the the crucified monkeys?

that alex ross article about the frankfurt school arguments coming back into fashion was spot on, feel like those dissensus dudes who were concerned about the fascistic impulse of juelz santana records were just a few years too early.

― deej loaf (D-40)

good to see a stand being made itt against the dreaded spectre of Cultural Marxism!

ps, pretty sure that you don't need to have read Dialectic of Enlightenment to think that fetishizing and popularising (and making money off) fash aesthetics is Kinda Bad

that was the original nutta robin carmody

drawing an equivalence between him (the no-mediocre likes of which u will never see again) and limp thinkpiece churnalism is a book-burning purge of history more balefully fascistic than anything itt

Dip-set dip-set dip-set

adorno >> carmody >> everything else

tbf to that carmody bit, even a decade on the westwood world premiere of 'santana town' & 'get em girls' (with the original sample) back 2 back will forever remain one of the most incredible bits of (national!!) radio i can recall.... the shouting, the bombs, the reloads, the reloads, the reloads, the reloads... reader it must have been at least a full half hour of third steve reich nuremberg rally sturm & drang

the gangsta rap nazi hotel foxtrot

rolling irrelevant rap bro internet thread 2014 [Started by ol' Wrink P's thinkpiece (some dude) in January 2014, last updated Thursday, 13 November 2014 14:11 by surfboard dudes get wiped out, totally] 29 new answers

lmao summoned

Actually I think "I apologise / take full responsibility" b/w "it was inspired by videogames" was an incredibly astute way of her / her team to handle it.

Because it brings up the troublesome tradition of Nazi iconography in video games (like, how many first person shooter games use "the Nazis!" as a lazy, bad signifier of "bad guys" or "evil" even while still getting to depict them in all their well designed iconography and lavish detail?) and, given the recent brouhaha about representation and ~ethics~ in videogames, I think "why do game designers get a free pass to throw nazi imagery around in any way they like, without having it problematised, but Nicki doesn't?" I think that's a valid question, whether or not Minaj or her team intended it to be.

...

I think there's a whole world of grey area between the positions of "every single thing Nicki does, from breakfast cereal onwards is subversive!!!" (which no one, to be fair, has actually taken) and "nothing that Nicki Minaj ever does, can *ever* be taken as subversive, that's like calling breakfast cereal subversive" (which is a very dumb argument, and some people do seem to be trying it on in the thread.)

It is not a good song, fair enough. (Though I'm not ~offended~ by it, I can see that there's an interesting twist in getting a bunch of dudes considered (by many; though obviously not by ILX) to be sex symbols to talk about how they would *like* to get with Nicki, but they're all not quite good enough for her - the power dynamics in that are funny to me.) Under most circumstances, "nazi iconography" these days I'd file under "lazy, bad signifiers; played out; try harder to be ~offensive~ if that's your game."

Given her statements, it would have to take a hell of a lot of our friend Roland to pull the kind of "death of the author" required to say that it is flipping White Supremacy - or rather that the flip is *intentional* - but still, that imagery, of taking ranks of Nazis, red-swathed colonnades, tons of fascist/empire artillery and in the centre of it all, where you're expecting Hitler or some Aryan nordic dude with slicked back blond hair, you've got an African-American woman, that image is still *striking* as a punchline, whether you choose to read that punchline as subversive or merely a bad joke.

"It's a shit single" is a valid criticism. "There's absolutely nothing subversive in any way about this imagery" is something that ignores gender and race dynamics in a pretty wilful way. But, I think, myself, given the reaction to her previous work, there's no way she could have tried to claim "it's flipping White Supremacy" and not get pilloried for it. With regards to rock/pop iconography and a world where so many white, male rockstars from the Rolling Stones to Pink Floyd to the Sex Pistols to the Stooges to Duran Duran to sodding Interpol have seen "Nazi Iconography" as just one more tool in the image playbox of ~generating controversy~ and received the benefit of the doubt as to their intentions, Nicki Minaj is going to get held to a different standard over it; that's a given in our culture.

there's no way she could have tried to claim "it's flipping White Supremacy" and not get pilloried for it.

one it would have been a load of shit

many white, male rockstars from the Rolling Stones to Pink Floyd to the Sex Pistols to the Stooges to Duran Duran to sodding Interpol have seen "Nazi Iconography" as just one more tool in the image playbox of ~generating controversy~ and received the benefit of the doubt as to their intentions,

all these happened a long time ago in a different media landscape

Pink Floyd used Nazi Iconography as a metaphor to show someone becoming completely unhinged so I'm not sure that there's anything to criticize them for beyond the existence of the metaphor; it certainly isn't done in a manner that endorses the source material.

I haven't watched Nicki's video yet so I have no direct opinion on it aside from finding the image from the resulting conversation of her subverting a bowl of cereal funny.

http://s2.hubimg.com/u/9111945_f260.jpg

just my $0.02

stepping up your game there missingno

he's no raccoon shittalki IMO

I haven't watched Nicki's video yet so I have no direct opinion on it aside from finding the image from the resulting conversation of her subverting a bowl of cereal funny.

― the farakhan of gg (DJP), Thursday, 13 November 2014 17:02 (1 hour ago) Permalink

Dan you should really watch it, it's kind of insane

okay a couple of things:

- this totally rips off Metalocolypse, the only thing missing is gratuitous gory violence
- this song is hot garbage from top to bottom

I find this commercial to be more insane than this lyric video:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5GEjKo2V4S4

i hope someone got promoted for thinking that up

i like that "it dies" wrt chia pets has gone from bug to feature

finally watched the video, woof

really worried about the album being another dud. at this point, i think it's fair to say that nicki just isn't an full-album artist but i will reserve full judgment until this drops

& that fact doesn't take away from the things about her that are really good

i wonder if the person who did this lyric video also did the "Anaconda" lyric video with the Mystery Science Theater 3000 homage at the end

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pvL39XfRXXM

i like "bed of lies" -- the only time i've ever enjoyed skylar grey, her part sounds... very 90s to me? like a jewel song or something?

also think this is one of the only times nicki has ever done an interesting confessional rap

I think because she is actually confessing something about her life her fans have been waiting for her to address for a while.

we've found a context in which Skylar Grey is a welcome presence, when the alternative is Nicki's warbling. if she sang it R&B radio might play it, though, now it's just for pop radio to ignore.

Deluxe Tracklist:

All Things Go
I Lied
The Crying Game
Get On Your Knees (feat. Ariana Grande)
Feeling Myself (feat. Beyonce)
Only (feat. Chris Brown, Drake & Lil Wayne)
Want Some More
Four Door Aventador
Favorite (feat. Jeremih)
Buy a Heart (feat. Meek Mill)
Trini Dem Girls (feat. Lunch Money Lewis)
Anaconda
The Night Is Still Young
Pills N Potions
Bed of Lies (feat. Skylar Grey)
Grand Piano
Big Daddy (feat. Meek Mill)
Shanghai
Win Again

so lookin ass got massive attack'ed :/

hopefully there'll be a great 12 track album in there like with roman reloaded.

"lookin ass" was never intended for the album

two meek mill appearances :)

is that first one this k michelle offcut though? http://www.rap-up.com/2014/11/18/new-music-k-michelle-f-meek-mill-anybody-wanna-buy-a-heart/

(god imagine a nicki/k michelle collab tho)

based on that tracklist i'm holding out for maybe 6 good songs

lookin ass is probably too good for this album

glad that the feat. ariana song is with her rather than katy perry as initially rumoured

"Lookin Ass" was the "Roman in Moscow"/street single for this era. Don't know why anyone thought otherwise.

Eager for Roman in Shanghai

wasn't lookin ass on the (commercial) rich gang album? it has an album!

its on that young money comp that also has drake's "trophies"

https://twitter.com/JessieWare/status/539912887419305984

huh

:O

!

omg screaming that jessie ware got a feat on this album while jessie j is left out in the cold

tracklist updated with the judicious deleting we know will be necessary

All Things Go
I Lied
The Crying Game
Get On Your Knees (feat. Ariana Grande)
Feeling Myself (feat. Beyonce)
Only (feat. Chris Brown, Drake & Lil Wayne)
Want Some More
Four Door Aventador
Favorite (feat. Jeremih)
Buy a Heart (feat. Meek Mill)
Trini Dem Girls (feat. Lunch Money Lewis)
Anaconda
The Night Is Still Young
Pills N Potions
Bed of Lies (feat. Skylar Grey)
Grand Piano
Big Daddy (feat. Meek Mill)
Shanghai
Win Again

cant believe lunch money is one of the features, so awesome

his video for 'loose change' has been up a full year and has 14 views lmao
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=lxiCk7O6FA8

oh i see its main release was on vimeo that makes more sense https://vimeo.com/40612980

"all things go" is actually pretty good http://www.stereogum.com/1722516/nicki-minaj-all-things-go/mp3s/

sounds like a less hokey version of "moment 4 life"

I like this.

sarge this was cool

http://www.wonderingsound.com/feature/who-is-lunchmoney-lewis-nicki-minaj-pinkprint/

ah thanks matt! it turned out to be a much more interesting story than i thought it would be when i started to look into it actually

so, if wikipedia is right, if you combine the standard edition tracklist of 16 songs with every the tracks on the 4 expanded editions (deluxe, itunes, target/uk, japan) there will be a total of 23 songs released off this record

so basically a double album's worth of tracks, gonna be a lot of alternate tracklistings floating out there

apparently the itunes edition contains a song called "truffle butter" featuring drake and wayne