Looking to earn your highest score as a lead artist since 2015? Simple! Just name your next song after a Street Fighter character and watch the points pile up…
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[7.57]
Pedro João Santos: The quintessence of Nicki Minaj has always been her malleability: menacing, hard-edged in one minute, effervescently batshit in the other. This was best evidenced by the smörgåsbord of theatrical rap and faceless, exhilarating pop defined by Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded. The Pinkprint absorbed these phenomena through mellower Nicki’s confessionals, usual braggadocio and less ostensive sexuality. (See also: the power of a Grammy exorcism.) So it’s surprising to arrive at “Chun-Li” and see how she thrives best in the amalgamation of it all. It’s notably streamlined: acerbically cutting, antagonistic bars superimposed on a sharp, horn-punctuated beat. Yes, the greater instance of fanfare on this tough-as-nails ode to Bad Guy Nicki via Ninja Nicki is literal. The song not only excels by contravening her recent plaintive instincts and depending on her inexorable ferocity and competence — it earns an instant spot among her finest.
[9]
Alfred Soto: Unless a miracle happens, it’s already peaked in the top ten and falling. The best solo Minaj single in years, “Chun-Li” deserves to blast out of every car. Following “2 Chainz” with “ding dong” and a backdrop that incorporates a horn bleat and wobbly synth line will do it. “They need rappers like me” — don’t we ever.
[8]
Rachel Bowles: There’s no way this finesse was a coincidence, surely? I doubt anything the Queen of Rap does is by chance. If so, it hurts to know that my favourite rappers are warring but not to hear it. Though “Barbie Tingz” is my favourite of the two declarations, “Chun-Li” follows the same pinkprint: stripped back beats and Nicki’s incredible charisma and cadence. That understated purr — an iteration of her signature trill — is a divine touch. Lord knows we need rappers like her.
[10]
Tobi Tella: The Nicki Minaj-Cardi B comparisons irk me; just because there are now two mainstream females who are popular and undoubtedly rappers they have to be compared and pit against each other, while there are a million men in the rap game that sound the same. That said, I think having competition put some fire in Nicki, because comparing “Chun-Li” and the singles she released last year, there’s such a difference in the amount of passion put in. It’s an abrasive, aggressive song — exactly what anyone would come to listen to Minaj for. She gets in some great punchlines, and even the ones that don’t work (sorry, you can’t convince me that “Lara BEEN Croft” isn’t stupid) are delivered with so much fervor that you stay in the song’s energy until she drops another great line. It even has the trademark Nicki Minaj WTF moment, with her suddenly comparing herself to King Kong for about 30 seconds in the middle of the second verse. Nicki just delayed her album, but if it’s all the quality of this and “Barbie Tingz,” it’ll definitely be worth the wait.
[8]
Ryo Miyauchi: Nicki’s creative enough to craft her own cartoon voice instead of borrowing one from the most overdone movie in hip hop, but I suppose there are few out there that provides a better voice for the delusion of grandeur than Tony Montana’s. Sadly, though, “Chun-Li” finds Nicki more on the point closer to the fall than the rise to power. There’s a labored energy to elicit cleverness from the collage-like spread of references to rhyme schemes, as if to prove she’s yet to grow out of touch.
[5]
Edward Okulicz: The easy confidence Minaj exudes as she rides the boom-bap beat for about half of the run-time of “Chun-Li” is a delight. More hard punch than Spinning Bird Kick, but satisfying. But she sure runs out of steam some way through the second verse, repeating lines about King Kong, dropping a 2 Chainz-related clunker and eventually almost strangling the song in its last seconds with asking for a Wi-Fi password. It’s a pity, because she sounds primed for a fight, and the production is like barbed wire knuckles in velvet gloves.
[6]
Jonathan Bogart: Eight years between “let me get this straight, wait, I’m the rookie?” and “oh, I get it, they paintin’ me out to be the bad guy.” Well, sure. Not to endorse some facile “either die a hero or live long enough to become the villain” pop mythography, but one of the reasons Nicki has to work harder than any of her peers to maintain her credibility (well, besides sexism, or rather a nested subcategory within sexism, because none of this would apply if she wasn’t a woman) is her relentless pursuit of beef. Fight enough people, and at a certain point you’re no longer a ronin, just a bully. But God, nobody fights more entertainingly.
[7]