This is Nicki’s 21st appearance on the Jukebox. She can drink now!…
[Video][Website]
[3.22]
Will Adams: If the Summer Jam debacle taught us anything, it’s that even in 2012 the Peanut Gallery was still ready to pooh-pooh artists for “selling out” – that, and certain players were aggressively idiotic enough to argue correlation between gender and musical taste. The problem with “Starships” is not that “chicks” like it. The problem with “Starships” is that it is utter shit, an obsequious stapling together of knockoff label-quality pop trends – jangly Dr. Luke guitars; anthemic, beatless choruses; thudding bosh – that, while terrible in anyone’s hands, is especially unfortunate in Nicki Minaj’s. “Pound the Alarm”‘s existence is about as tragic, though it is an improvement, as long as you’re willing to acknowledge that one can do worse than sounding like a helium-fed Taio Cruz. It’s standard club-pop that is completely indistinct, and it probably merits a higher score, but fuck it; this isn’t selling out, this is reckless wasting. “Beez In the Trap” has been anchored to the 50 spot on the Hot 100 for weeks, none of Nicki’s pop excursions have come close to the bottled lightning of “Super Bass”, and it is a travesty that an artist who has shown serious promise is one of the biggest contributors to the endless tail-chasing that this pounding electro phase has wrought. I cannot endorse it.
[2]
Colin Small: Complaining about Nicki Minaj not rapping like a rapper is annoying, because it’s clear that she doesn’t care and she’s not going to listen to us. That doesn’t mean that the dance music she makes isn’t bad. It suffers from the same problem as a lot of similar songs: a whole lot of undeserved elation.
[4]
Jonathan Bogart: “Starships” without the class consciousness. So “Starships” with everything good taken out of it.
[3]
Anthony Easton: So Minaj being an “interesting experiment” has now been totally proven false, right? Her flow is compromised, she has less personality than her producers, and this is a complete Beyonce rip-off with less interesting alarm sounds.
[3]
Patrick St. Michel: Nicki Minaj’s stabs at Wayne-esque rap? Sounds fine! Nicki Minaj as pop singer? OK with me! Nicki Minaj pushed off the stage so a squelching Euro-dance freak out can gesticulate? No thank you.
[4]
Alfred Soto: It’s loud, it pounds, and will certainly be a hit. “Better than ‘Starships'” is not my idea of an endorsement.
[4]
Ramzi Awn: Come on Barbie, let’s go party! Extra point for being so damn cockamamie.
[5]
Brad Shoup: This right here is the limit of invocations. Dreadful empty pinging chased with portentous Zimmerbuzz. Shut it down indeed.
[1]
Katherine St Asaph: I’d call it brave, after “Starships” ignited every latent argument in the music world, to release yet another pop track — but I know better. Nicki Minaj’s pop career could write a corollary to Poe’s Law; even if she’s sincere, any given single is still indistinguishable from the product of one or many meetings in which the terms “EDM,” “target audience,” “social media followers” and/or “market share” were used. The track’s RedOne redone, Nicki Minaj is indistinguishable from pitch-shifted anybody, the best line (“I’m a bad bitch, no muzzle”) stinks of sloganeering, and the worst (“music… gets me… hot”) would land in the bottom half of will.i.am’s lyrics. I still can’t decide whether Nicki’s grinning or grimacing through her sudden anonymity, but neither is good.
[3]