Ah man, we have missed Nicki Minaj. Those who follow closely know she’s been gone for pretty much the whole summer, choosing almost entirely to opt out from the playful exchanges with her fan base on Instagram and Twitter she’s known for. From about mid-July until the recent release of a single with DJ Khaled singe, she’s been very quiet and the culture definitely has been a less fun place without her.
In the meantime, we’ve seen the Tweets (almost always from the Lil’ Kim faithful but still) trying to write her off like her best days are behind her. Hip hop has always been the cruelest music genre for women, barely allowing them to exist in the first place and quickly attempting to downgrade them to washed status should god forbid they take even the smallest of breaths between projects.
With the release of “The Pinkprint Freestyle,” Minaj with the flick of a wrist neatly dispenses the haters with one of the smoothest freestyles we’ve heard all year that quietly reminds that there’s so much more to a great rapper than just good bars. In the case of her latest freestyle, we get the full reveal of flow plus her depth of personality.
The many-headed monster within Minaj has arisen, whether because she needed to get some verses she’s been compiling off her chest or she wanted to let people know while she may be out of sight, she’s still paying attention, tipping her hat at fellow New Yorker and rising rap talent Young M.A., whose wildly popular single “OOOUUU” Nicki raps over in part 1 of her freestyle. Minaj gets right down to business, starting off with a reminder that she still has top dog status in this town, letting Young M.A. know who she is with the introduction, “Young ma, it’s the female Jay.”
Young M.A. isn’t the only female she shouts out, she also give a nod to Foxy Brown and in part 2, she pivots back to her Caribbean fam through Shaba Ranks’ “Ting-A-Ling” and then mixes in sounds from another female great, using M.I.A.‘s 2008 game-changing single “Paper Planes” to spit about causing her competition to go missing.
It’s a deeply satisfying freestyle with texture, depth plus twist and turns aka vintage Minaj. Now we just need to her let us in on the “haters will say it’s #photoshopped” pregnancy rumors.
