Slow-burn love is a beautiful thing. For me, it happened with sparkling water, green olives and Nicki Minaj. Now set in iron, my Minaj crush is a late-blooming and complex thing.
I first heard her rap during her bright pastel phase, when she wore colourful wigs and outfits. It was too much: I couldn’t get with that cartoon quality and foolishly dismissed her. Then I heard her on Kanye’s Monster, and damn near lost my mind. She raps in two voices, one vicious, the other simpering; the whole thing simmers with self-confidence and elevates the track several notches. Her look might have changed over the years (far less garish now), but her technique and political awareness have matured, too (as have mine).
She’s a sort of wizard with accents and personas and flow, and possibly the funnest wordplay rapper out there (“You couldn’t get a fan/If it was hanging from the ceiling” on Ciara’s I’m Out). Unabashedly feminine – every studio album has “pink” in the title –, she is also unfailingly pro-girl. Tumblr gifs of her exhorting girls to stay in school and never depend on a man financially abound. She’s become an important voice on the treatment of black women in entertainment and beyond: “Black women influence pop culture so much, but are rarely rewarded for it,” she tweeted in July. Nicki is necessary.
At last weekend’s VMA awards, she made Miley Cyrus’s jaw drop when she handed over to her with, “And now back to this bitch that had a lot to say about me the other day in the press – Miley, what’s good?” (she was referring to an interview Cyrus had given to the New York Times a few days earlier, in which she said Minaj was “not too polite”). “Miley, what’s good?” was a rhetorical question. Nicki’s good. Nicki’s great.
