Read on to learn why I think Nicki Minaj is weird, scary, and
maybe a little bit awesome. (Singles Jukebox)
Asher Steinberg: Leaving the hook aside for a minute, I suppose it’s unfair to hold Nicki’s tendency to lapse into really traditional heterosexual narratives against her. Nothing requires her to be the standard-bearer for gender role bending; nothing says she can’t try to be the mildly racy 2011 equivalent of the Chiffons. The trouble is that she’s just no good at it. To pull off something like “He’s So Fine,” one needs to actually sound attracted. Nikki, notably, isn’t capable of doing the song without framing it in some odd fictive world in which she’s an English girl who has a “thing for American guys,” as if she can’t even rap about liking guys of her own nationality without employing a Brechtian distancing device. As for the hook, it continues pop’s dully self-reflexive trend, pioneered by Britney, of likening throbbing hearts to musical instruments. A comment on the history of the trend: decades ago, rappers started rapping about the aphrodisiac powers of 808 drums, or the ascetic virtues of their DJ’s record-scratching. When rappers did that, it wasn’t this cute self-reflexive reference to the means of their music’s production; rather, like classic rock homages to guitars, rapping about 808s or scratching was a way of talking about the cultural history of those instruments, and about the values they embodied. But when a Britney, or a Nicki Minaj, neither of whom have ever touched an 808 or bass synth, liken their beating hearts to bass, they trivialize the sentiments their similes supposedly are meant to evoke, in the same way that locating every song in the club saps the sentiments contained in those songs of any ramifications outside of the club.
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