Nicki Minaj’s superpower is her ability to adapt. In her 16-year career, she’s been a for-the-streets mixtape queen, a chrome-pink pop star, an empowered groundbreaker, and—using her formidable theater skills—a chameleonic character rapper, morphing into personas like Harajuku Barbie, Tyrone, Chun Li, and the beloved Roman Zolanski, all with the wittiest wordplay this side of Lil Wayne.
Pink Friday 2 includes tracks about her emotional fortitude, her Trini and Caribbean pride, her unfuckwithable armor, and intimate reflections on her life. On the affecting album opener, “Are You Gone Already,” a Finneas production that samples Billie Eilish “when the party’s over,” she grapples with the pain of learning her father was killed by a hit-and-run driver in 2021, and reflects on her responsibility and love as a mother. She flexes her agility on tracks like “Beep Beep” and “Barbie Dangerous,” which conjure the much beloved Mixtape Nicki: the latter interpolates Biggie’s “Notorious Thugs” and includes the line, “Name a rapper that can channel Big Poppa and push out Papa Bear/Ho, I’m mother of the year.” Or on “RNB,” an otherwise middling track with Tate Kobang and Lil Wayne where she raps, “I keep his secrets/I let him beast it/Kissin’ on my thighs and my breast/He two-pieced it.” Yet on the same song, when Wayne raps, “’Bout to buy a fake booty for a real-ass bitch,” it’s an odious reminder that Minaj felt pressured to get ass shots at the beginning of her Young Money career—an example of context seeping into, and souring, the music.
