Nicki originally wanted to surprise fans by debuting the project on her Beats 1 Radio show Queen Radio on Thursday night, but ended up having to push the release to midday on Friday.The 19-track project features Eminem, Labrinth, The Weeknd, Lil Wayne, Ariana Grande, Swae Lee, Future, and Foxy Brown.
Queen is her first album in nearly four years, following 2014s The Pinkprint. Several singles including Chun-Li and the Ariana Grande-featuring Bed have been blasting on the radio for months, but the album boasts a total of 19 tracks, complete with the colorful and creative rhymes that have defined the rappers career. Her colorful outfits and wigs may have characterized her in the past, but the key to her art is still the music itself. Before going into a list of how the biggest rappers exceed their superficial characteristics (One rough ride, now you DMX and Swissy You made one dope beat, now you Kanye) she starts by invoking Notorious B.I.G., whose spirit hangs heavy over this album. One of the best tracks, Barbie Dreams, samples the beat from Biggies Dreams. On the Beats radio show where she debuted Queen, Minaj said that Biggie has been a lifelong inspiration to her particularly for the sense of humor he wove into his raps. Among its standout lines is this joke about Drake, which spoofs the Scorpion rappers famously emotional music. But now that relationships done, so she can fire insults at both of them in the same song. Here, she even mocks the most emotional line from Meeks iconic Dreams and Nightmares (recently used by the Philadelphia Eagles as their Super Bowl entrance music ). Here, she christens herself the greatest of all time in a multi-layer pun that also weaves in the polysyllabic names of famous fashion designers Jean Paul Gaultier and Karl Lagerfeld. Here she actually inhabits the voice of a fairy-tale queen, and the back-and-forth with a Snow White -style magic mirror is reminiscent of Minajs early work, where she would often switch between multiple different personalities and voices. But Minaj is pretty good at that style too, and finishes her first verse on this track with a rapid-fire revenge fantasy. Of the two singles she released in April to begin the Queen promotional cycle, only one (Chun-Li) made the final album, and it invokes Street Fighter s iconic kickboxing cop. As if the Biggie invocation on Ganja Burns and the beat sample on Barbie Dreams werent enough, she directly references the song here and if youre unlucky enough to be one of the rappers she drags on the former track, youd know to fear her pulling up on you with that beat. Biggie isnt the only iconic New York rapper, of course; here, Minaj also references the Wu-Tang Clan and their famous mantra: cash rules everything around me. Its also pretty funny that her final words on the album, before launching into the outro and its recitation of inspirations, are jelly bean. Entertainment Weekly is a registered trademark of Meredith Corporation All Rights Reserved. Entertainment Weekly may receive compensation for some links to products and services on this website.
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