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.
"Your Love" vs. "Letting Go (Dutty Love)"
"Letting Go" is cute, but there really wasn’t much competition here ("Your Love" was just lucky it didn’t have to face "Super Bass" in the semi-finals—the ultimate battle of poignant pop from Nicki.) Basically, this is a match-up between pop-rap that nails the assignment, and pop songwriting that goes above and beyond, and "Your Love" easily advances. —MG
WINNER: "Your Love"
It’s funny to consider that, when sequencing and prepping for the release of Pink Friday, Nicki really thought that there were 13 songs better than "Super Bass". (This set a precedent: Nicki has become notorious for putting some of her best and most popular songs on as bonus cuts. The Pinkprint’s best record, "Truffle Butter", happens to be the last bonus cut on the album, and two of her most successful charting singles—from this tournament: "Va Va Voom" and "Turn Me On" —share the same status.) "Check It Out" was released as a single before "Super Bass". So was "Right Thru Me". Those singles did relatively well, and hindsight is always 20/20, but it just goes to show how hard marketability is to gauge. The mastery of pace and the stressing of vowel sounds in "Super Bass" really builds up the short, punchy adlib-like jabs. Though "Super Bass" takes the fall, it goes out with dignity; few records can do what it does, and it took a near superhuman effort to prevent it from advancing. It’s quintessential pop. —SP
"I’m on some dumb shit," Nicki crowed on "Anaconda" this year, a much-needed reminder to all the huffy critics stretching their think piece-typin’ fingers that it’s not always that serious. And though "Super Bass" is absolutely a serious song, it’s also the undisputed apex of Nicki on some dumb shit, slipping seemingly ephemeral quips like "slicker than the guy with the thing on his eye!" into the canon and hucking pink goo globs at crushes. Sometimes I have to remind myself that rap writers represent an insanely small and pretty irrelevant portion of music fans. "Super Bass" is great for many reasons, but mostly because it makes teen girls feel really cool, and that’s enough. Like Sheldon said, ultimately, "Monster" is one of only two songs "Super Bass" could lose to in this tournament. —MG
WINNER: "Monster"