I guess Nicki’s alter ego is doing the gap year thing…?
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[6.43]
Alfred Soto: Defensive, are we, after a year’s worth of hosannas?
[6]
Dan Weiss: The latest rapper to take her butthurt reviews too seriously has decided a chart-topping pop tour de force needs an all-bark no-chorus follow-up to reassert her spitterhood: “Brace yourself/buck tooth.” A badass teaser for the next album for sure. But I’m worried about her pop tour de force cred.
[7]
Iain Mew: After getting over my initial disappointment that there was no way to read this as being about Roman Abramovich‘s rise to football club-owning oligarch status, I enjoyed its aggressive assault. The music doesn’t have to do much but does it well enough. Nicki drags words out, twists and slurs them, spits them in quick succession, but always makes everything convey the two key messages: “what the fuck?” and “I’m baaaack”.
[7]
Jonathan Bradley: It’s easy to be seduced by the simple flash of tracks like “Roman in Moscow” — the type with “no motherfucking bridge, bitch, no motherfucking hook, no motherfucking third verse” — and, on this one, Minaj extracts more from pep and pugilism than she does from her actual lyrical content. (Really, her adlibs are funnier than her rhymes here.) But even though “buck tooth” and “hockey puck” are elementary grade hashtags, Minaj has enough fun claiming to be a racist and a bigot and drawing out her vowels Waikikiiiiiiiiiiiii style for it to really matter. It’s designed to be a taster; consider my appetite whet.
[7]
Andy Hutchins: There’s too much mediocrity going on here, and no amount of Nicki rapping like her hair is on fire and saying “I’m a racist, I’m a bigot” and stretching a single syllable out over multiple bars, only to hashtag it “Cameltoe!” is enough to save it. I do enjoy “I … uh, five times dare you … rich-ass hoes.”
[5]
Brad Shoup: “I’m a racist, I’m a bigot” — that’s what the kids are into, right? Maybe said kids will trade out a playgrounded outro and a “camel toe!” ad-lib (OK, fine, I enjoyed that) for a killer second verse that converts grating synths into laudably noxious flashes. Roman’s vocal levels are breaking needles while StreetRunner purees a chase-scene string-snatch into a dark background froth. Trust me when I say I never take this “Threat-Level: Giant Dicks” shit seriously… when it comes to hip-hop, I’m not a horse-race follower, I’m a chaos guy. And Nicki’s dips into her cod-British stage accent seem cosmetic rather than chaotic, as if she knows there’s no way we could take all those “ayn” sounds in a row.
[6]
Katherine St Asaph: And lo, legions of music critics rejoiced.
[7]