Part of the magic of the modern record business is that the worth of the album has been diminished. Almost anything can be a great album now — a mixtape, a cluster of songs on Soundcloud, a dump of digital files. That to some the album still has a sort of aesthetic integrity, that it should mean something different from the rest of their creative output, is an increasingly old-fashioned idea.
Meet Nicki Minaj, fuddy duddy. Ms. Minaj still sees inherent aesthetic worth in the album form and is willing to remold herself to achieve something in that space that she hasn’t elsewhere.
Over the last five years, Ms. Minaj the pop striver has often gotten in the way of Ms. Minaj the fearsome rapper. But Ms. Minaj is already a pop idol because of her fearsome rapping (and her outsize personality, though those are related phenomena); the idea that a different approach is necessary to bolster her fame is antiquated.
“The Pinkprint” is her third studio album, and like the first two it’s full of compromises and half-successes. Sometimes she wants to be cousins with OneRepublic, sometimes Lil Wayne. And she succeeds at both, though only one of those goals is noble. Where Ms. Minaj stumbles is that the more earnest her subject matter, the more direct and deliberate her flow. As a rapper, she’s capable of grand technical feats, rapid cadence switching and complex rhyme patterns, but generally she puts those fireworks to the side when diving deep into her feelings.
One song that successfully bridges both approaches is “Bed of Lies,” which Ms. Minaj purportedly wrote about the dissolution of her longtime relationship with a man who drained her. “Put you in the crib and you ain’t never pay a bill in it/I was killin’ it, now you got me poppin’ pills in it,” she raps.
But when Ms. Minaj thins out her gift in service of a catchy pop mean, it smacks false. If a song like “The Night Is Still Young” were released by someone like, say, Pitbull, it might pass muster, simply because no one expects more of him. But on Ms. Minaj, it’s a poor fit.
It’s no surprise then that the most successful song from this album thus far has been “Anaconda,” a craven revision of Sir Mix-A-Lot’s “Baby Got Back,” a pop-rap staple, enhanced with Ms. Minaj’s jokey limerick-esque stories. But it’s nowhere near the best. Far better are the songs in which Ms. Minaj lets her rap freak flag fly — “Four Door Aventador,” which has echoes of Biggie Smalls, or the rowdy “Trini Dem Girls,” or her transcendently bawdy verse on “Only.” But when it comes to more traditional songs, Ms. Minaj too often leans on sap, and rarely do the singers who she imports to contribute hooks (when she’s not singing them) firmly imprint their personalities. Even Beyoncé is underused on the jumpy “Feeling Myself.”
In this way, Ms. Minaj is a Christina Aguilera in need of her Linda Perry, an Elton John in search of a Bernie Taupin — not to write verses, which Ms. Minaj is outlandishly capable of, but to build songs with.
All the raw material is there. By at least one measure, Ms. Minaj has had as ferocious a year as any rapper. Consider her alternate 2014 — a sharp-fanged appearance on Beyoncé’s “Flawless” remix; her headspinning rhymes on the unprintably-titled song from the Young Money label compilation that’s shortened to “Lookin”; a playful verse on Trey Songz’s “Touchin’ Lovin’ ”; and song-stealing remixes of YG’s “My Hitta,” Young Thug’s “Danny Glover,” Rae Sremmurd’s “No Flex Zone,” and more. A few more of these, and you’d have a decent-length set of songs better than most any major label hip-hop album this year, including this one.
