Member Since: 10/1/2011
Posts: 53,790
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Guardian: 4/5 stars for Minaj
Quote:
“I’m the big kahuna, go let them *****s know,” Nicki Minaj spits pungently, four songs into the opening night of her UK tour. She’s unarguably the most interesting kahuna in hip-hop today, all the more so because she’s in flux, having shed her neon Harajuku Barbie persona – the caricature that so engulfed her, it’s been immortalised in pink-wigged perfume bottles.
In its place is something even more outrageous: a reinvigorated rap pulveriser, as well as a vulnerable songwriter who drapes herself over a piano to sing frayed ballads. It feels as if she’s finally allowing the public a glimpse behind the facade.
These, along with the concluding Starships, are tonight’s poppiest moments, representing what she apparently wants to leave behind. Of her celebrated butt, subject of much attention even before the Anaconda video fetishised it, we see relatively little - evidently another change in strategy.
A slew of tracks from her current album, The Pinkprint, show the way she’s heading. All Things Go, performed through a lace veil, embodies the album’s minimalism; against a backdrop of live and synthesised beats, she’s urgent and undeniable. The hipster’s Dido, Jessie Ware, arrives to duet on The Crying Game – easily the most off-kilter moment of the show. Later, Minaj powerfully recreates her featured verses from Beyoncé’s Flawless (Remix) and Big Sean’s Dance (A$$).
Surrounded by Amazonian dancers, at once part of the onstage ensemble but also regally detached from it, Minaj is a remarkable figure who keeps getting better.
http://www.theguardian.com/music/201...-london-review
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