Celeb News: SPIN: "Roman Reloaded" - One Month Later

Graduation

Here's an interesting article on Nicki Minaj's sophomore album, Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, and the perception of the album one month after its release, via SPIN:

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Originally posted by Brandon Soderberg

Blame criticisms of Nicki Minaj's Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded — that it's half great, half disaster — on the inelegant transition from "Champion," a slow rolling rap track that ends with a furious verse from Nas, to "Right By My Side" a sunny turd of a slow jam turd featuring Chris ****ing Brown. It's jarring, and it declares "rapping's over, time for pop," which turns out to be only half-true. Pull "Right By My Side" and the next track, "Sex in the Lounge" off the album (and while you're at it, Beenie Man collaboration, "Gun Shot"), and Roman Reloaded is a solid, always entertaining, sometimes frustrating major label rap album.

Recall that Pink Friday wasn't received that much better. Back then, a whole year and a half ago, the narrative was that guest-verse scene-stealer Nicki gave in to pressure to go pop. That doesn't seem true. Mostly because Pink Friday's songs with singing are so emotionally well-wrought, and still contain plenty of great rapping. Pink Friday sounds like the album Nicki wanted to make. As I've noted before, there was a frustrating flip of gender expectations — a female rapper is criticized for playing into her gender — a faulty theory for many reasons, though namely because the assumption that "pop" scans as "feminine" and rap as "masculine" is some sexist ********.

With Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, the complaint is not so much that Nicki didn't bring the real, but that she collapses to pop expectations instead of doing all the weird stuff she does on the first half. This misunderstands just how strange the pop songs are, and again, presumes that making pop music automatically entails compromise. The celebration of Nicki's "weirdness" too, is a way of boxing her in, speaking on what's good for her, and forcing her into but another category (rap game's manic pixie dream girl) that she's way too interesting to fully occupy.

On Friday, SPIN's Marc Hogan demonstrated how the attitude towards Nicki's latest has been shifting closer to positive: "If you spend a lot of time in the real or virtual company of music writers, as we do, you hear a lot about how Minaj is at her best when she's showing off her unparalleled skills as a rapper. If you spend a lot of time with middle-school girls, we suspect, you'd be more likely to find yourself singing along to pop hits like 'Super Bass.' Historically speaking, the little girls are usually right."

Disappointment with Roman Reloaded isn't entirely limited to music writers (it sold 253,000 its first week to Pink Friday's 375,000) and the pop singles, which are simply not as strong (or even as starpower-fueled) on Roman Reloaded. But there is a disconnect between people who hear "Starships" as formulaic ("Moves Like Jagger" + Venga Boys + an Electric Daisy Carnival compilation) and those who just think "THIS SONG IS FUN TO DANCE TO!"

The nutty new music video for "Starships" (Kenneth Anger + #SEAPUNK + David LaChapelle's Rize) should bridge that sucks/rules divide. It's evidence that Nicki Minaj's subversive qualities are always on display. As Hogan observed, the line "**** who you want, and **** who you like" is a status quo-bucking form of utopianism that rarely breaks through to mainstream party pop now. As visceral and sugar-rush-filled as Nicki Minaj's music is, she's an expert at making slow-growers that reveal themselves weeks or even months after their release.

A few weeks ago, I tossed out a "redux" version of Roman Reloaded — rearranged with the three offending tracks lopped off — and I've received some positive tweets and e-mails about it. Here's my version of Roman Reloaded: "Roman Holiday," "Starships," "Pound The Alarm," "Come On A Cone," "Hov Lane," "Beez In The Trap," "I Am Your Leader," "Whip It," "Stupid Hoe," "Roman Reloaded," "Beautiful Sinner," "Automatic," "Fire Burns," "Young Forever," "Champion," and "Marilyn Monroe."

What Jessica Hopper says in her SPIN review stands ("Such a strict divide is a good idea: Switching back and forth between rappy-rap broadsides and Ibiza tracks would leave this sounding more like a mix CD than an album"), though an album that sounds like a mix CD seems pretty awesome to me! So, don't listen to "my" version because it's better than the real version, though I think it is. Listen to it because a resequencing exposes the way that, free of false genre divisions, and the moans of lousy critics caught up in categorical thinking, Roman Reloaded is an excellent, though easily dismissible album.

So did SPIN serve the true tea or did they drop the ball?

For reference, here's the review of the album when it came out:

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Originally posted by Jessica Hopper

"This is for the hood / This is for the kids," offers Nicki Minaj on "Champion," one of her second album's half-dozen tracks of rap perfection. She also suggests that it's for "single moms" and "****** doin' bids," which still leaves out her various other constituencies: pre-tween girls blinged up in Silly Bandz™, the crowded 2 A.M. dance floor at Manhole, those lamenting the lack of pop-rap irreverence post-OutKast, and anyone who wants too see a girly-girl MC Godzilla-ing her muy macho peers. Which is to say that Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, like a Whitman's Sampler, has something chewy for everyone.

She's showing us all sides here — singer, MC, and theater geek, complete with a few alter-egos (gay-boy Roman and his mom). Reloaded is separated into the Rap Half and the Pop Half, a nearly 70-minute monolith frontloaded with devastating proof of her skills as an MC, then transitioning into her diva bit via 10 tracks of sparkly Top 40 precision. Such a strict divide is a good idea: Switching back and forth between rappy-rap broadsides and Ibiza tracks would leave this sounding more like a mix CD than an album, and having a treacly bit of Chris Brown do-me diarrhea ("Right by My Side") sidle up next to the mania and jungle drums of "Roman Holiday" wouldn't serve anyone's best interests.

Her rap offerings are nearly flawless. See the frosty "Beez in the Trap," Minaj's staccato throwback flow flaunting the borough lilt of her voice and annihilating the rest of the record in the process. "Roman Holiday" is pure theater, the closest hip-hop's gotten to its own "Bohemian Rhapsody," full of thrilling crescendos and twitchy verses that verge on the ridiculous, but always shift toward the triumphant. The rest is exactly what you want post-"Monster": the Harajuku Barbie detonating on posse cuts. Though Jeezy, Weezy, Nas, and Drake do their thing, she wrecks any good-for-a-girl doubts that still lingered. "This is the official competitor elimination," she raps on "Champion," and indeed it is. She says she's the female Lil Wayne, but considering his recent singles, he's more the microwavable appetizer prepping us for the real meal of Minaj's hot-pink rap exorcism.

Nicki Minaj is pop's superheroine, her image a Hulk-ed out perversion of female perfection so saccharine it's almost grotesque, all nuclear **** and neon. She undercuts the caricature by screaming "Suck my dick!" no less than three times here, which makes bon mots like, "It's Britney, bitch," seem a little wan. If it wasn't clear before, she is the future, and she's here to **** with us. Which is why it feels good to believe in Nicki the rapper: Her spitter mode puts the impossibility of the whole package into fabulous relief, the defiant glory of the contradictions, the shredding of our expectations. She's chart-savvy, but it's still art.

With such a gratifying front end, it's easy to dismiss Roman Reloaded's subsequent pop tracks as a paying of the piper: The too-perfect, Dr. Luke-produced songs are her penance for sneaking deranged yodeling ode "Roman Holiday" in there. While such dexterity is part of her appeal — she can sing the hook and slay on the verse — it's hard not to think of that duality as a hindrance, highlighting her ferocity as a rapper but exposing that, as a singer, she's just a typical girl. Which rings false, because we're already so well-acquainted with her riotous DayGlo steez — we know the real Minaj story. Her pop simulacra, with their steamroller synths, Guetta throb, and pant-along verses, are a lesser representation of her talents. How you feel about Nicki the singer depends on how you feel about, say, Katy Perry — same difference. There is nothing to get lost in on the bad-boy romance "Beautiful Sinner," no destroy-all-comers spirit to rile you. A criminal lack of Minaj-ness. Her artistic potency dissolves, and she's just another well-finessed quirky diva, distinguished from the endless wave of finna-be Britneys only by her pink wig and wicked grin.

The upside is that even when Minaj is dialed to "mediocre," she's never close to terrible; on "Automatic," she does a better (or at least more nuanced) Rihanna than Ri-Ri herself. "Starships, " her fun first single, might be your ringtone until June, but until she raps out that verse, she could be anyone. Which is probably the point, but it's asking you to forget that Minaj the MC is singular, the prodigal daughter returned to save all who want to believe.

8/10

mons†er

Quote:

a female rapper is criticized for playing into her gender — a faulty theory for many reasons, though namely because the assumption that "pop" scans as "feminine" and rap as "masculine" is some sexist ********.

Who said this?
How is she criticized for playing into her gender,
she cam out as a rapper, not a pop artist.
Gender has nothing to do with it

Graduation

Quote:

Originally posted by mons†er

Who said this?
How is she criticized for playing into her gender,
she cam out as a rapper, not a pop artist.
Gender has nothing to do with it

That's his point.

Errrlend

Quote:

Here's my version of Roman Reloaded: "Roman Holiday," "Starships," "Pound The Alarm," "Come On A Cone," "Hov Lane," "Beez In The Trap," "I Am Your Leader," "Whip It," "Stupid Hoe," "Roman Reloaded," "Beautiful Sinner," "Automatic," "Fire Burns," "Young Forever," "Champion," and "Marilyn Monroe."

- Roman Reloaded, Right By My Side, Sex in The Lounge and Gun Shot.

I agree. lol.

NEUTRON

Quote:

Originally posted by Errrlend

- Roman Reloaded, Right By My Side, Sex in The Lounge and Gun Shot.

I agree. lol.

Roman Reloaded is on their track listing