The Nicki Minaj Singles Tournament is a head-to-head competition of Nicki’s most prominent singles and features on other artists’ singles seeded by commercial success. The tournament has a field of 32 songs divided into four different regions: two for each category. It judges songs based on their individual merits and weighs them against other songs in the canon. This battle explores the depth of her singles discography, tries to make sense of her divergent styles, and crowns victors based primarily on listenability and secondly on aesthetic value, but takes both into account when forming a final verdict.
"Super Bass" vs. "Pound the Alarm"
It’s been interesting—I say that with an implied eyebrow raise, "interesting"—to watch Nicki’s demographic and media coverage shift over the last five years, in subtle but significant ways. Take "Super Bass": there seems to finally be something of a loose consensus reached that it’s a very good pop song. It sat at #15 on Pitchfork’s list of the best songs of the 2010s earlier this year. Go back to the best tracks of 2010 list, the year Pink Friday was released, though: "Super Bass" doesn’t place in the top 100, nor does anything from her debut album. Of course Pitchfork round-ups aren’t some sort of objective standard, but I think that discrepancy gives a good indication of how Nicki criticism has changed its tune a bit. Between "Monster" and Nicki’s galvanizing stream of late 2013/early 2014 remixes and loosies, the "best rapper alive?" conversation wasn’t really happening outside of serious fans. The current consensus seems more along the lines of "we’ve seen her potential all along," but I think there’s been a fair bit of revisionism over the last year, often from male critics. Of course it’s ultimately a net gain for this sort of critical reinvestment in her talent. I’m just saying—I see you! (And in a perfect coincidence, this tweet just emerged on my timeline, a quote from Nicki’s CRWN lecture—she sees you too!) All this is to say: the consensus is correct. "Super Bass" is a perfect pop song, an uncanny rap song, and a uniting force. —MG
Everything Meaghan is saying here is true, and there’s a strong possibility that the overt pop of songs like "Pound the Alarm" had a hand in producing both the revisionist history of Nicki as an intimidating "best rapper alive?" candidate and as a Sure Thing. As lame as it is, there’s something to be said for the role that the "pop vs. rap" debate has played in highlighting Nicki’s renaissance during the time period mentioned above, where casual fans came to appreciate how terrific Nicki The Rapper is in a bit of forced nostalgia, scared back into the depths of her rap catalog to shelter themselves from the torrential pop downpour. Additionally, it’s Nicki’s pop crossover appeal that made her a huge success, and there were really no signs of that before Pink Friday. It’s only now that critics and fans alike have started to carve her face into the rap Mt. Rushmore of modern rap, and that’s built, in large part, on her work outside of the genre. It’s fitting then, that "Super Bass" bridges those two worlds and serves as an important mile marker on her road to rap ubiquity. —SP
WINNER: "Super Bass"
"Beez in the Trap" vs. "Your Love"
Of course this seemingly straightforward matchup builds itself up into an allegory of Rap Nicki vs. Pop Nicki, once and for all. Frankly, I am bored of legitimizing this binary by acknowledging it, even if only to knock it down, whenever we talk about Nicki. Nicki isn’t hell-bent on eliminating this sort of categorization just to prove that she can (though that’s definitely part of it). She’s also trying to expose that this binary rests on the foundation of sexist, reductive ideals ("Pop Nicki" never just means that), and show that just because a lot of the rap we love comes from that place, it doesn’t have to always be like that. So, ignoring the binary, and focusing on the music: "Your Love" is a better song than "Beez in the Trap". "Beez" is a time capsule, that one bit of 2012 summed up in one perfect blast; "Your Love" feels timeless, or more accurately, from another plane of time altogether (which would begin to explain that perfect line: "When I was a geisha, he was a samurai"). —MG
The Pop Nicki label is definitely coded language used to discredit her work as a whole. It’s widely considered the smudge on her resume, and at this point it’s low-hanging fruit. Yes, there are Nicki Minaj pop songs that aren’t good, but the p word isn’t some blanket term that can reduce a significant portion of her catalog to drivel. Rap elitists treat pop the way rock elitists treat rap and it’s more than disparaging; it’s petty. That’s essentially where "Your Love" comes in: it defies many of the tropes traditionalists in rap hate about popular music with the exception of being popular. It’s balanced, precise raps with a light pop top coat. It shatters the connotation that Pop Nicki is Bad Nicki with a cocktail of depth and personality. But stepping away from that to get down to brass tacks: "Your Love" is better than "Beez In The Trap" because it has no expiration date. "Beez" feels frozen in carbonite, trapped within the confines of the 2 Chainz feature run. In a few more years it’ll be dated and "Your Love" will still feel fresh enough for a re-release. —SP
WINNER: "Your Love"
"Where Them Girls At" vs. "Letting Go (Dutty Love)"
I’ve been thinking a lot about "weirdness" in rap lately. It was a good year to be a so-called "weird" rapper (think of the quirky personalities who made 2014 headlines: Makonnen, OG Maco, Young Thug). But what are we talking about specifically when we praise a rapper’s "weirdness"? Chief Keef released the weirdest music of his career in 2014, but I didn’t see nearly the same celebration of the "weirdness" of the abstract productions on his Back From The Dead 2 as I did for, say, releases from secondary and tertiary members of Awful Records—who, to be clear, I love, but who have somehow gained a reputation as a "DIY" rap crew despite "DIY" being basically the default setting for rap groups. Is Glo Gang DIY? Why not? All this is a long-winded way to say: I question anyone putting all their stake in the "weirdness" of Nick Minaj. Of course, her zaniest raps are some of her most thrilling; her "Where Them Girls At" verse is far more dazzling than a David Guetta guest spot has any right to be. But if taken to an extreme, it risks turning Nicki into a cartoon of a rapper. "Letting Go" is easy, conversational, a peek at Nicki at her most natural. —MG
To add to Meaghan’s point, weirdness isn’t necessarily overrated, but it’s a pretty lazy out for those dead set on finding a frame for rappers that don’t fit cozily into other typical rap labels. Weirdness is a very weird thing to make into an aesthetic, though it does contribute to many other aesthetics. It’s also worthy noting that normalness is supremely underrated. It gets a bad rap. Even Normal Nicki, at times. Nicki’s grounded raps are what anchor her wacky ones. It’s that dichotomy that makes her exploration of personality so intriguing. A complete focus on her quirks disregards that balance. This isn’t a full-on clash of wacky vs. normal, but it’s close. "Where Them Girls At" is very cartoonish—like doing voiceover work for Pixar—but it’s still spirited and fun. The real story here is just how good "Letting Go" is. It can be argued that the song had the most difficult road to get here, taking down the toughest #1 seed and a Drake song. —SP
WINNER: "Letting Go (Dutty Love)"
"Dance (A$$)" (Remix) vs. "Monster"
This match-up feels almost cruel, but I’ll say this: Nicki has a fascination with kitsch—with garish, excessive, potentially in-poor-taste aesthetics. I’m not just talking sartorially (though remember her 2011 VMAs look?); in her lyrics, too, she is often drawn to this same sort of lurid brashness. She has an uncanny, unparalleled ability for straddling the good/bad axis—sometimes "badness" can be an aesthetic choice, as with her intentionally tuneless singing on "Stupid Hoe". And I think that’s part of the reason she has such a great track record with what you might call novelty songs, like "Dance": she knows how to mix "low" and "high" culture in this really keen, fascinating way, because she has a genuine affinity for both. But I’m stalling. You already know how this one ends. —MG
This is the Mike Tyson vs. Michael Spinks of Nicki singles match-ups. We’re calling the fight early. It would’ve been a very tall order for Nicki to drag Sean with her all the way to the Semi-Final (especially lifting deadweight lyrics like, "Take my belt off; bitch, I’m Pootie Tang"), and she almost did! But all Cinderella stories end with carriages turning into pumpkins and this isn’t the exception. Meaghan makes a great point that hadn’t dawned on me until now: the teetering seesaw dynamic of good/bad lyrics has helped save a lot of records—like one that didn’t make it into this field of competition, B.o.B.’s "Out of My Mind"—just by playing to both "highbrow" and "lowbrow" audiences, oscillating between the two just enough. With that said, "Dance (A$$)" straddles the good/bad axis; "Monster" straddles the astral plane. —SP
WINNER: "Monster"