Nicki Minaj, the famous rapper who has been in the game rap game for 16 years, has finally released an album.
The orginal Pink Friday her first album, had a lot of features like Eminem, Lil Wayne, Kanye West, etc. She became super popular after releasing this album, which then she became the blueprint for female rappers who didn’t have to be feminine mirrors to their male patrons, and showed everyone that you could stand on your own.
Pink Friday 2 which was dropped on December 8th proved to her fans and haters what she has done for the rap industry. Like in the original Pink Friday Nicki Minaj jumps out of character in every song, her most famous character being Roman Zolanski. Nicki is super talented at changing from persona to persona and genre to genre. She puts her signature cadeneces on drill, pop, dancehall, afrobeats, R&B, Jersey Club, and trap. She introduced a new persona Red Ruby Da Sleeze, which is also a song on the album and it gain it’s popularity on TikTok before the ablum was released.
Pink Friday 2 is a mixture of emotions. She opened the album with the song “I’m the Best” which was boastful and had a more happier emotion to it. The song “Are You Gone Already” is a Finneas production that samples Billie Eilish “when the party’s over”, Nicki Minaj expresses her pain when she found out that her father was killed by a hit-and-run driver in 2021, and also relfects on her responsibility and love as a mother. She also shows off her agility on tracks like “Beep Beep” and “Barbie Dangerous”. Every song is a different story, they are showing and telling the strengths and weakenesses Nicki Minaj faces. Although many ciritics say it lives up to the hype, others say it lacks innovation. “‘Pink Friday 2’ feels like a consolidation and refinement of everything Minaj can do — including dropping pop culture references that no other artist would think of. ‘Ducking ’em like Björk?’ That’s surely a wink to the Icelandic musician’s infamous skirmish with a photographer. Thirteen years after ‘Pink Friday,’ Nicki Minaj hasn’t lost her ability to catch us by surprise.” — Nick Levine, NME. Pink Friday 2 is just another way of showing everyone what she is capable of doing.
Me personally, there are some songs on the album that I have heard before like “Red Ruby Da Sleeze” and “Big Difference”, since they were released earlier and they went viral all over TikTok. However, the album was a total surprise, with the different genres, there wasn’t really one category she sticked to. But who’s surprsied? She has always done this even in the original Pink Friday. I really loved the mix of samples she used in her songs, it’s like she transformed the songs and gave it her signature spin to them. Overall, this album I give it an 8 out of 10 just because not all songs on the albums were really interesting and catchy, but my favorite song is “Everybody” featuring Lil Uzi Vert, it’s super hype and catchy and I recommend listening to it!
Now that she released her album and also announced she’s going on tour in 2024, I’m highly anticipating it and I’m counting down the days!
