Suck My Minaj

By Hannah Golightly

Tonight Everett True has seriously pissed me off. I guess he’ll like that. I’m feeling irrationally annoyed that Nicki Minaj sucks. Maybe it’s the feeling of betrayal. Usually when ET leads me up a garden path with music, at the end of it we at least enter the Secret fucking Garden. But oh no! Not this time. No … this time I’m just up a garden path feeling pissed off in my party dress.

Here’s why:

Everett True said, “I liked Nicki Minaj more when I didn’t know how to pronounce her name”, sparking off debate on the subject of Miss Minaj. I mentioned that I thought that considering her music was pop, it wasn’t very catchy. ET promised to show me the way claiming he had found the exception to that rule. Then he played me this and this and this.

Then I got seriously pissed off and wrote this:

Yeah … still underwhelmed by her. I think the thing I like best about her music is the synths and the beats. I like her rapping voice but can’t stand her singing voice even though she sings well. I absolutely can’t get over how stupid she looks … like worse than Katy Perry in the daft costume stakes. Although I am not a fan of Katy Perry’s music, I at least think her costumes create a well rounded aesthetic for her music which is pop. I honestly had no idea until now that Nicki Minaj was more of a filthy mouthed rap artist than a pop star … and maybe that is where the confusion and unfulfilled expectation came from. I thought with the way she has been marketed on tv and in magazines that she was half way between Katy Perry and Lady Gaga and Jessie J … but if you shut your eyes to the horrors of her music videos and try to forget that dayglo exists for a second, you start to hear some pretty dark, pulsing, understated sexy beats, a cool atmosphere and a great rapping voice with its ‘I Don’t Give A Fuck’ pacing and tone. I guess I missed how cool she actually sounds when her music is peaking due to the distracting cartoon-drag queen visuals … her visuals are larger than life which creates a gap between that and her music that sounds like it plays it cool. I sort of wish she was dressed more like Lady Gaga in the ‘Just Dance’ video because at least that was cool. Nicki Minaj sounds like she’s Odd Future’s girlfriend but looks like she’s escaped from the float of some tacky parade … and there’s a time and a place for both, but the two things don’t mix well. She almost looks like she’s stepped out of a children’s tv show for the under fives (obvs not when wearing skintight cut-out catsuit with stripper heels though) and so to be dressed up as a panto dame and to sing like the female version of Odd Future is not inspiring, it’s fucking annoying. I want to look up to her and respect her, but I don’t know what’s going on there … quite literally the foulest mouthed music I’ve heard in ages dressed up and presented like children’s pick’n’mix sweets … but for adults. Some things clash and set things off in a new and inspiring way … but Nickie Minaj is not one of the for me. Because she doesn’t seem to pull it off, to me she looks like she’s trying to hard. I just don’t know what she’s trying too hard to do.

I’m pissed off because she comes close to being cool. She’s like Lil’ Kim or a more bad ass Beyonce … she has those cards in her hands and she fails to play them. If she wasn’t appearing to simultaneously appeal to primary school children and your lap dance-loving dad, she could be a role model for rebellion with her penchant for swearing like her breath depended on it. She sounds hardcore. She looks I-Don’t-Even-Wanna-Know-What-Core. She ends up being about as cool as Insane Clown Posse … and believe it or not, they actually had a couple of good tunes, but I doubt you knew that because the second you heard that they were a posse … of insane clowns, my guess is that you got pretty turned off and fast. And forever.

And in case that’s not enough reason to feel let down and fucked off – see the Minaj style swearing, it’s catching; shame it’s not catchy – to top it all off, I don’t like her lyrics ET. I also feel like none of it stuck in my head or begged me to re-listen. Unlike Grimes earlier which, despite being unusual, still got stuck on repeat in my head after two listens … and in a good way. I couldn’t even hum you a note of Nicki Minaj’s music if I tried. And I don’t even want to listen to it again to find out. Maybe some amazing remix will come along and change my mind (i.e. cut out the cringe-worthy melodramatic singing bits and create some sort of hooky chorus and I’ll hear it in another context away from all that horrid neon paint) … but I won’t hold my breath.

Personally, I don’t just blame ET for all this, I also blame Elton John. And the manufacturers of neon paint everywhere.

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by Hannah Golightly