Nicki Minaj is the Queen, with all the good and bad that implies. In this case, it means an album that could have used some heavy editing, but which still contains enough pieces of genius to deserve serious attention. Because at the end of the day, Minaj is an exciting artist precisely because she’s willing to take on so many roles, so many perspectives, so many chances.
And if the final product is a little overstuffed, it just means every listener is free to construct their own 11 track ‘just the good bits’ version of Queen. For me, that means shying away from a lot of the processed pop stuff, which mostly falls pretty flat to my ears. But my condensed Queen is filled with gems, starting with the opener Ganja Burn – the chillest diss track I’ve heard in a long time – and the gloriously meta Barbie Dreams. The middle is held up by the beautiful Bed, a collaboration with Ariana Grande, the strutting Chun-Li and the compact aggression of Good Form. And it’s all brought together at the end by the blissed out breakup anthem of Nip Tuck and the I’ll-see-my-way-out torch song Come See About Me.