Music and Movie Reviews | December 12th, 2023
‘Pink Friday 2’ Review: The Christmas Gift That Keeps Giving
By: Jalynn McDuffey
“Dear Old Nicki” – A Look Into “Pink Friday’s” Past
Pink Friday 2 dropped on Dec. 8th, and the long-awaited return of Nicki Minaj is finally over.
Announced June 29, a few days after the release of the rapper’s single “Barbie World” with up-and-coming rapper Ice Spice, the album was set to paint the world pinker than the “Barbie” movie it was associated with already did. If onlookers thought the film brought out the pink-colored delusions of young women, they could never understand the force that “Pink Friday 2” would create.
Like the last time you played with your Barbie dolls, “Pink Friday,” Minaj’s debut studio album, was a sentimental moment because it has not only shaped the pop culture of the 2010s but because it became the soundtrack to young Black girlhood.
Someone potentially thought of their first crush during “Your Love,” laughed alongside their friends during “Roman’s Revenge,” or danced during a birthday party to “Moment 4 Life.”
While both Minaj and her listeners have grown, this new album marks her taking a chance to reconnect to how far they’ve come.
Graphic: Jalynn McDuffey
“Last Time I Saw You” – The Pink Friday 2 Review
With the release of the album’s first single, “Super Freaky Girl,” Minaj was the second solo hip-hop female artist to debut at number one on the Billboard Hot 100. The first was Lauryn Hill in 1998. Like a callback, the original “Pink Friday” had the second-highest sales debut from a hip-hop female artist; second again to Hill.
“Pink Friday 2” immediately began to reach back into Nicki Minaj’s past.
This album is not just a reimagining of the original, but calls back to who she has been since the beginning while confessing all of her growth and scars she’s earned along the way. The album currently has eight of the top 10 songs in the Hip-Hop and Rap categories, and while we recognize a few songs within the new album, it is important to acknowledge the changes Minaj has made along her 13-year journey.
Are You Gone Already
The album opens with the track “Are You Gone Already,” produced by Finneas. The confessional track features the pitched-up sample of “When The Party’s Over” by Finneas’ sister, co-songwriter and Grammy-nominated performer Billie Eilish. With his sister’s vocals and Nicki Minaj’s strong verses, Finneas brings them together till Minaj sings over Eilish’s chorus.
It creates a moment where you are almost listening to Minaj listening to the song itself.
She sings to herself as if you would during a sad car ride. You are meant to hear how the original song provides comfort to Minaj between her rhymes. You are meant to meet her in a dark place, as this song is her way of addressing the moment she learned her father had passed away from a hit-and-run before meeting her son, affectionately nicknamed “Papa.”
Minaj recited how her father never getting to meet him affected her motherhood. Minaj focuses on love and how not even the money that brought her family freedom could protect her from grief. She speaks of how her emotions may affect her son. Conversationally, she airs out her feelings, hoping he would one day forgive her by saying, “All this guilt you carry is heavy; You’ve already made your peace with me: One day, you’ll have to forgive Mommy.”
Let Me Calm Down ft. J. Cole
If Nicki Minaj does anything well, it expresses her emotions, but in the sixth track, “Let Me Calm Down,” she expresses how difficult it can be to say the right thing when you love someone.
Reminiscent of her letter-style love stories, Minaj details the feelings everyone faces when love isn’t perfect. While asking for space to be angry, upset, and emotional before she reacts, she details how sometimes you “can’t break and fix something in the same sentence.”
The beat transitions into a verse from the song’s feature, rapper J. Cole, who is almost harder to get a verse from than Minaj. With a similar reader’s cadence, Cole delivers a perspective similar to his popular single “Crooked Smile.”
Cole backs Nicki by expressing how a man should handle a woman who has everything baggage and all. He mentions how in the same way women need extra care, men take extra time to care for those they love as well. They express that love requires four hands to hold it together. Like the song, both rappers needed to be vulnerable to make the track.
The song is summarized by the last pleading line by Minaj, “With you, I promise I’ll try.”
Needle Ft. Drake
Nicki Minaj brings out the internet’s favorite faux-Jamaican, rapper Drake, for this calypso-style song, which can be described as a ‘finding your person’ vibe.
Drake starts with his singer’s voice, detailing finding a partner you don’t want to fight with and never want to be without. The soft verses are similar to something he would whisper to you across the table while eating ceviche on the beach at sunset.
On his side of the track, it is very romantic and special. On the other end, Nicki speaks on her worth, her hardworking nature and how she is one of one.
The duo’s natural back-and-forth verses recreate their playful, conversational dynamic on every joint project. He’s a loverboy, she’s the self-proclaimed “Baddest,” and they’re both truly meant for each other. Both of them are one of a kind, and want they’re listeners to feel one of a kind too.
The verse finishes with Minaj congratulating herself and Drake for their friendship, as they have held on to each other over the last 13 years, through Young Money Records and now both being titans in the industry.
Everybody ft. Lil Uzi Vert
It would not be a great review without mentioning the viral track “Everybody.” However, Nicki’s verse is not the star of this show, nor is Lil Uzi’s, who serves as the track feature. It’s the beat.
The straight-out-of-South Florida sample combined with the Jersey Club remix reminds every South Floridian — like this reviewer — of being at the summer family reunion. This song was meant to make everyone get up and shake their hips. This was made for TikToks. This was made for house parties. And that’s never a bad thing.
Despite many artists getting hate for making dance music more than focusing on lyrics, Minaj delivers short verses that make you want to touch “your body,” as the lyrics say, and don’t take away from the dance track. Dance music must be what everyone is looking for, as the song went number one shortly after the album’s release, one wonders how the album would have been perceived if ‘Everybody’ was released as a single.
Either way, the vibe of the song fits right into the middle of the album with “Super Freaky Girl” and “Red Ruby Da Sleeze.”
Graphic: Jalynn McDuffey
Pink Friday Girls – The Legacy Continues
One song that encapsulates the original “Pink Friday” is the smashing hit “Super Bass,” a super feminine girly pop, Pink-covered anthem for young girls everywhere. “Pink Friday 2” has its own “Super Bass” in “Pink Friday Girls.”
Despite not being as big a dance song as the original, it features a classic teenie-bopper anthem, “Girls Just Wanna Have Fun” by Cyndi Lauper. A classic from 1983, Minaj was thrilled to hear that Lauper had cleared the sample for her use.
The song details being young, being in love with someone who’s “Samurai Fly,” looking for ‘her lipgloss and her liner,” and just wanting to have fun. This is the future every little girl who listened to Pink Friday envisioned for herself because this was the world Nicki had paved for them.
At its core, “Pink Friday 2” is a testament to the type of woman Nicki Minaj told many young girls it was okay to be. To be emotional, not to have it all together, to be your number one fan and work hard every day.
Nicki is the same icon she carved herself to be 13 years ago, and hundreds of battles later, she is still the “Baddest,” the most hard-working, and still unquestionably holds the title of queen. Some may be growling tired of it, but “Pink Friday 2” only goes to show how not changing has kept her on her throne for so long.
The world should be thanking Nicki because without “Pink Friday 2,” or the original, femininity in even its ugliest forms can be celebrated easily and without shame. Nicki chews up the shame and spits it back to us in a way that empowers us to keep getting knocked down. And we love a generous queen — ask Miss Ellen.
