Hey Nicki! Hey Nicki! Asthmatic Ode to Nicki Minaj

WHEN FIRST I heard "Your Love" on KMEL, I thought I had met it in the sky. Nicki's arrival had the same effect; I didn't know she was somebody I'd been waiting for, and I already can't fathom a hip hop world without her.

Nicki Minaj exists on so many planes she might fool you. First come the pink wig and flaunted ass, daring you to underestimate her. Then there are the many faces, many voices, Nicki as self-created cultural artifact. But rip off all the shiny packaging and you find an artist with talent and heart. (Also be advised you'll want to re-use such nice wrapping paper.)

An obtuse observer could mistake her sexiness for a cheap appeal to men, but in fact her brew of brazen sexuality and conquering power is bound to baffle and terrify many males. (Hence, When I throw this p**** you better not start duckin.) It's not easy to find straight male Nicki fans. Men seem to want to watch her, but from a safe distance.

She appeals, instead, to women. Nicki is power, and transmits power. On some advanced like fifth wave feminism shit. In this she differs vastly from beefmate Lil Kim, whose kittenish sexuality, while powerful in its day in its way, is less threatening, and voluntarily subordinate. Nicki would never list herself after Wayne the way Kim deferentially self-seconded once upon a time: Brooklyn home of the greatest rappers/Big comes first then the Queen comes after.



Nicki shrewdly combines her Barbie wigs with aggressive rapping, one of many replications of her perfectly calibrated hard-soft dichotomy. See also her person, with its sharp points and soft pillows, and her voice personas, which range from babyish to thug murderous. And unlike Lil Kim and Foxy Brown, who specialized in a delicious ghetto brand of sexual aggression (yeah I said it: specialized) , Nicki's aggression is general. Thus does Barbie also get accused of being too masculine.


AND SHE DOES channel masculinity when she feels like it, calling upon male alter ego Roman Zolanski. Suffice it to say that Roman can go head to head with that paean to male aggression known as Slim Shady. (It is understood that regular Eminem is a marshmallow Peep compared to this alter ego; Shady is the one still stuffing ladies in the trunk after all these years.) Over a scary railroad track of a beat, courtesy of Swizz Beatz, Roman and Shady defile and destroy anything and anyone in the vicinity. My favorite bit is in her second verse:

I hear the mumblin
I hear the cacklin
I got em scared, shook, panickin
Overseas, church, Vatican
You at a stand-still: mannequin

Next she breaks out the emotional matter, ranging from the glorious romantic phantasm of "Your Love" to the relationshipal nitty gritty of "Right Thru Me." The most powerful lyric in the latter goes simply, Okay you're right/Just let it go.

"Dear Old Nicki," in which Minaj openly grapples with her past self, is the most honest work of self-reflection I've heard from a rapper. Stars so often have unglamorous former versions hiding in a closet, those easily embarrassing rough drafts along the editing process of self-creation. It's quite a feat to embrace an old self while deciding to move beyond it. But Nicki can.

After all the serious work is over, it's end-of-album party time. The bangingly superficial "Super Bass," waiting to be discovered by club turntables everywhere, celebrates her own femme version of fun pimpery:

I am Nicki Minaj
I mack them dudes up
Back coupes up
And chuck the deuce up

NICKI IS PART of a cadre of Millennial rappers who realized in the nick of time that rap had staled into its own conventions in need of flouting. She is joined by Young Money labelmates Lil Wayne, the eyelid tattoo alien, and Drake, the matinee idol psychoanalyst. Peers include the dapper-suited philosopher of hard-partying Kid Cudi, and political nerd Lupe Fiasco. These Millennial rappers aren't nervously checking their street cred every five minutes, and so are free to explore uncharted terrain, like singing their own hooks, wearing eyeglasses, collaborating with rockboys, riding skateboards, experiencing ambivalence. And at long last, Andre 3000 has challengers for the weirdness throne.



Nicki, with her many guises and cartoon curves*, is trailed by an inevitable misapprehension that she is phony. (To which she responds: If I'm fake I ain notice cause MY MONEY AIN'T.) But her rapid rotation of wigs and voices is rooted in theatricality--she studied drama at LaGuardia High, the "Fame" school--and her embodiment of so many Nickis is a way of claiming every possible iteration of self, as well as an acknowledgment that to rap, after all, is to wear a persona.

*Her improbable ass to waist ratio does have this perfectly logical explanation: she's on a diet, but her pockets are eating cheesecake.

Were she sexplosion only: dayenu. But she can do sex, she can do glam, she can do swag, she can do love. She can be scary, zany, savvy, vulnerable, introspective--often under the same wig on the same song. She can murder a Swizzy beat then hopscotch across a will.i.am confection. Her strength is her stubborn unwillingness to be any one thing, least of all whatever you might want her to be. And I'm not just saying that as an X-pon-tittie Barb stan. Though to be one is a privilege.

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