But I guess "going pop" was to be expected.

As far back as 2009, she was talking about how she didn't want to be classified as a "female rapper" and that she was an "entertainer" above all else.

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Did she say a female rapper is a bitch who raps? Heh. At least she didn't say a Stupid Hoe that raps. She's got mouth on her.

Nicki Minaj definitely feels the love from her fans…just not always from the ones in her hometown of New York City.

When asked if she feels like she gets the proper love from New York, the South Jamaica, Queens MC was pretty blunt in answering.

“Hell f****** no!” Nicki exclaimed to radio personality Charlamagne Tha God, who interviews Minaj as part of the “Press Conference” iTunes Store bonus track found on her Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded album, which dropped Tuesday (April 3). “I was selling my mixtape out of my muthaf****** BMW out on Jamaica Avenue…f*** you niggas! You niggas don’t know the half of what I’ve been through!!!”

Aww, out of a BMW ... uhm, Isn't that a hell of an expensive car?

I'm reading the replies off of the site I found this at. So much venom about her leaving Queens, New York (my hometown too, and she was born in Trinidad - that be my moms native land) behind figuratively and literally. Even a little South side of Queens versus North side, lol. Who knew New York was still so gangsta?

I was expecting at least 400-500k for the first week...

Have we really seen a female urban artist do that in the past 5 years though (not that it is at all usual for a pop artist either, it's indeed less usual)? Open that big? Lil Wayne, Drake, Jay-Z, Kanye and Eminem have done it repeatedly, but unless you're a country artist (or putting your album out during Thanksgiving or Christmas week) it's kind of rare for a female.

It's arguable she wasn't able to saturate the pop audience as much as she wanted to, yet, and she alienated some of the harder core (and NY based) urban audience.

Maybe in the US, but Starships has been a huge hit in Europe.

In fact, Nicki's new album will debut at #1 on the UK album chat tomorrow, which a "female rapper" has never been able to do before. Her pop leanings have certainly built her an audience abroad, even if she's suffered because of it in the US.

Peter Rosenberg, of NY's Hot 97 (a hip-hop station), went off on Nicki for "selling-out" and compared Starships to a Katy Perry or Ke$ha recording.

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I love Nicki, and I love the new album. But honestly, I didn't know it was a new album until the other day. I thought it was a deluxe edition re-release of Pink Friday with a few new tracks. I had no idea it was all new material.

I had never heard Starships. That does sound a lot like Katy Perry. It's not bad at all but it's not Hip-Hop.

Maybe in the US, but Starships has been a huge hit in Europe.

In fact, Nicki's new album will debut at #1 on the UK album chat tomorrow, which a "female rapper" has never been able to do before. Her pop leanings have certainly built her an audience abroad, even if she's suffered because of it in the US.

That is a great accomplishment as is opening with a #1 album in the U.S. that could very sell as much as 250,000 in its first week. I think she'll sell a bit more than the estimate.

I don't listen to rap unless it spills over into Pop. Missy Elliot and Nicki are probably the only female rappers that i've heard that I thought to myself there's something really great to the way they put those words together (Jay-Z and Eminem for men). Nicki is probably still a little too street for me though with jams like "Stupid Hoe" lol.

In certain sub-cultures of art it's not okay to be anything other than this or that. I think that's more "wrong" thinking and acting than anything Nicki is doing. That said, she can't make songs like "Starship" and sell herself as hardcore Hip Hop. She should probably try to stop being so defensive which she clearly is at times (the piece I quoted) and just be herself and be honest about what she likes and what she's doing.

I'm not sure what I think of the album yet, but I do find the "going pop" thing kind of ridiculous. True, she never did have something as blatant as Starships on Pink Friday but that album definitely had a lot of pop influences--most of the hooks were pure pop!

Edited April 7, 201213 yr by YRBB

It probably didn't help that Starships was proceeded by collaborations with Madonna and David Guetta.

She basically appeared on back to back to back pop recordings. Even Stupid Hoe is pretty pop.

But again, this has crossed her over globally. The European audience in particular is embracing her.

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Edited April 7, 201213 yr by Y&RWorldTurner

But again, this has crossed her over globally. The European audience in particular is embracing her.

I looovee the way that song sounds. Sounds like Britney in some of her harder core pop. I don't listen to radio too much anymore (between iTunes, Pandora and YouTube being available on phones), so I have no idea what's hot or not on radio right now.

True, she never did have something as blatant as Starships on Pink Friday but that album definitely had a lot of pop influences--most of the hooks were pure pop!

For example, Superbass.

Yeah, I think her old hood is just being hard on her. If she's being true to herself, that is all that matters. Maybe the girl selling tapes out of her BMW wasn't the real hardcore Minaj, maybe this girl who likes her rap and her pop is. But again, she shouldn't get so defensive about being or not being hardcore rap or street if she wants the sell-out stuff to drop. Own who you are, whoever that is.

ETA:

Listening to the DG collab again. I've totally heard this song before, and I did think it was Britney featuring Minaj when I heard it.

MTV did an article about it:

http://www.mtv.com/n...-reloaded.jhtml

April 5 2012 4:05 PM EDT 1,806

Nicki Minaj Looking For Ultimate Hip-Hop/Pop Crossover

'I think she's taken it to the next level,' says Sirius/XM's Reggie Hawkins.

By Gil Kaufman

It's one of the trickiest moves in music and even if it's done right it only goes in one direction. With her just-released second album, Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, Nicki Minaj has served notice that she aims to be that rarest of MCs: one that can appeal to the pop crowd and hard-core hip-hop heads at the same time.

It's virtually impossible (so far) to start out pop and then work up enough cred to get over with rap fans. But like Missy Elliott, Nelly, Eminem and Diddy before her, Minaj is hoping that she can stay relevant to the heads who fell in love with her three years ago on a series of buzzy mixtapes and still become the next Katy Perry.

"She can rap, flat out, she has proven it with some of best rappers in game and she will never lose that ability and because of that she will always remain a favorite in hip-hop," said XXL magazine executive editor Jayson Rodriguez. "It's the pop crowd that can be fickle ... She has the personality, the skill, the songs and charisma to inhabit that pop sphere. As long as she has skill level, there's no reason she can't top both charts."

Thanks to a string of knock-out features on hits by everyone from label boss Lil Wayne to DJ Khaled, Kanye West and Ludacris, Minaj, 29, has plenty of rap bona fides. But she's also reached for the pop brass ring by performing at the Super Bowl with Madonna, the Grammys
 and on "American Idol," indulging in the kind of outrageous fashion sense that makes headlines and earns cover stories from the mainstream press. She also launched the new album with a single in "Starships" that's like tooth-rotting candy to pop radio, and a far cry from the gritty mixtape songs that launched her career back in the day.

That might explain why Roman is almost pointedly split in two, with the first half presenting her rap side courtesy of a string of no-nonsense rhymes produced by the likes of Hitboy and Blackout, with features by Cam'ron, Weezy, Rick Ross and, on the hard-hitting potential break-out rap single "Beez in the Trap"
, 2 Chainz. Those songs are followed by a string of tunes on the second half produced by Lady Gaga collaborator RedOne, pop trackmaster Dr. Luke and J.R. Rotem.

For the most part, mainstream critics have not been kind
 about the cross-over dribble move, which has also left some fans with divided loyalties
.

"I honestly think that she saw the blueprint Kanye West made with his last album [My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy], and the way music is going where an artist can have a record playing on four different platforms [at satellite radio] and she personified it and maximized it," said Reggie Hawkins, program director for Sirius/XM's Hip Hop Nation. "She [isn't a rapper that] does pop records that suck. She does great pop records and songs like 'Pound the Alarm' are going to be played in clubs from here to Brazil. I think she's taken it to the next level."

Minaj recently told theLos Angeles Times that she took the disappointment of her rap fans hard when they complained about lightweight tunes like "Your Love" and "Moment 4 Life" from her best-selling debut, Pink Friday.

"I felt a lot of pressure to be inspirational and responsible [on that album]," Minaj said. "I like all kinds of music; when I was working at Red Lobster the soundtrack of my life there was Avril Lavigne. Hip-hop fans are my core, and I can never not be hip-hop. But why not showcase all sides of who you are?" Which is why, she said, she wanted Reloaded to indulge all of her many personalities, from the frantic verses of "Roman Holiday" to the mixtape-like "Stupid Hoe" and the Eminem feature "Roman's Revenge."

The way Hawkins reads it, Nicki doesn't seem to really care if hip-hop gives her the cold shoulder. "She's seen the light internationally and seen that there's a bigger world than just Queens, New York, or Bankhead, Atlanta," he said. "She's grown and when I sat down with her [i got the sense] that she doesn't care. She's going to Will Smith the game ... her next step is movies. It's not about hip-hop critics who want to box her in as a hip-hop artist. It's about her core fans, her Twitter followers and social media people, her Barbz. If they give her backlash it's a problem."

And when Nicki appeared on Sirius radio's "Sway in the Morning"
 on Shade 45 this week, she reacted to that potential backlash by explaining that she has to keep evolving. "You just gotta realize that I'm never gonna be one-dimensional," she said. "Even my core fans I think, at times, thought I was one-dimensional when I was doing mixtapes. However, even on the mixtapes, I was singing and I did a song called 'Can Anybody Hear Me' on one of my mixtapes where I was singing and talking about being a female rapper and trying to get signed."

Rodriguez said he totally understands Nicki's desire to grow artistically and predicted that the grumbling from the rap community would settle down eventually once she puts out some hot remixes.

"The thing with a half-and-half record is that you'll have detractors because it's never fully one thing or the other," he said, pointing to label mate Drake as someone who has managed to keep both sides of his audience happy with a more cohesive pair of albums that smoothly mix his pop and rap leanings. "As opposed to Missy or Diddy, who started out glossy and very pop hued ... Nicki came from the DVD/mixtape scene. Her base is hip-hop, which launched her to reach those pop heights and now they're looking at it like, 'wham, bam, thank you ma'm.'" Regardless of the grumbling, she's on track to show them all when Roman likely debuts at #1
 on the Billboard charts next week.

Edited April 7, 201213 yr by Y&RWorldTurner

I enjoyed the tooth decay nod to Starships. Starships is even too bubbluegum pop for me the self-professed pop/ballad lover. With Guetta the song and sound is at least hard, with GMAYL she is rapping - in what I've heard of Starships, she's almost making Katy Perry seem hardcore.

Thanks for bringing this article over. Interesting read. Simple and to the point. She should issue this whenever somebody bitches her out - instead of going into a f****** frenzy literally.

But I guess "going pop" was to be expected.

As far back as 2009, she was talking about how she didn't want to be classified as a "female rapper" and that she was an "entertainer" above all else.

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And there you go. She's not a sell-out. She's doing what she wants to do and running her business the way she wants to run it. She doesn't owe anything to the streets or the "hood" fans who say she's going "too pop."

Ive been listening to the new album and I also think it comes across too pop. She sings way too much in it and not enough rapping. It definetly has some catchy songs but I preferred her first album

I love Nicki, and I love the new album. But honestly, I didn't know it was a new album until the other day. I thought it was a deluxe edition re-release of Pink Friday with a few new tracks. I had no idea it was all new material.

And that's one of the reasons why I dislike the title of the album so much; it does make it sound like a deluxe edition, makes unnecessary comparisons to the first album, and is just bad-sounding. Why not call it "Champion" or whatever?

Ive been listening to the new album and I also think it comes across too pop. She sings way too much in it and not enough rapping. It definetly has some catchy songs but I preferred her first album

I have to agree that I prefer the first album and would like it if she rapped more; however, that's as far as I agree with all those going nuts over the direction of the album.

And that's one of the reasons why I dislike the title of the album so much; it does make it sound like a deluxe edition, makes unnecessary comparisons to the first album, and is just bad-sounding. Why not call it "Champion" or whatever?

She's following in the footsteps of Lil Wayne and Jay-Z with the album titles. Wayne's The Carter IV (that followed Carter III, Carter II and Carter) debuted with 1 million albums sold. Then there's Jay-Z with his multiple Blueprint titles.