As its title suggests, Nicki Minaj‘s fifth album is a sequel to her exuberant 2010 debut ‘Pink Friday’. At times, she makes the connection clear: ‘Pink Friday Girls’, a pop-rap banger that samples Cyndi Lauper‘s ’80s anthem ‘Girls Just Wanna Have Fun’, is so keen to recapture the giddy magic of ‘Super Bass’ that it name-checks the ‘Pink Friday’ hit. And when she raps “tried to play me but I shitted on ’em first” on ‘My Life’, it’s an unambiguous nod to ‘Did It On’em’, a scatalogical banger from that debut.
This time, though, Minaj raps about excremental revenge over a high-end sample from Blondie’s ‘Heart Of Glass’ – a reminder that she is now a major player, not the industrious upstart who stole the show on Kanye West‘s ‘Monster’. Minaj also underlines her “queen of rap” status with a brace of ferocious brag tracks. When she raps “I don’t fuck with horses since Christopher Reeves” on ‘Red Ruby Da Sleeze’, it’s not just a crass reference to the riding injury that left the Superman actor paralysed from the neck down, but also, presumably, a dismissal of a rap rival with an equine-themed name. A catty rhetorical question on the same track – “All them botched face photos, why would you post those?” – could be aimed at any number of tweakment-loving peers.
‘Pink Friday 2’ also contains celebrations of Minaj’s sexual prowess: a line about “vanilla ice cream comin’ down my ass cheeks” on ‘Pink Birthday’ has nothing to do with Häagen-Dazs. But what makes this album really compelling are more vulnerable moments like ‘Last Time I Saw You’, a pop-R&B gem on which she grapples with her father’s death, and the reggae-flecked album closer ‘Just the Memories’. “I ‘member when I was the girl that everybody doubted / when every label turned me down, and then they laughed about it,” Minaj raps. It’s a welcome reminder that her rise wasn’t without setbacks.
On the same track, she thanks her early collaborators Drake and Lil Wayne, both of whom make guest appearances elsewhere on the album. So, too, do Future, J.Cole and an uncredited SZA, who supplies a voice memo that opens the dancehall-flavoured ‘Needle’. Billie Eilish pops up too, courtesy of a sped-up sample from her 2018 single ‘When The Party’s Over’ that Minaj weaves into ‘Are You Gone Already?’ “You never got to meet Papa,” Minaj raps regretfully, addressing her young son who arrived shortly before her father was killed in a 2021 hit-and-run accident.
Comprising 22 tracks that unfold over 70 minutes, ‘Pink Friday 2’ is probably too long, but Minaj paces it sharply. The first half pings between lean, mean hip-hop tracks and melancholy midtempos, while the second half contains a smattering of pop-rap cuts including the Rick James-sampling ‘Super Freaky Girl’. Minaj’s ability to impose herself on an instantly familiar sample also drives ‘Everybody’, a frantic banger built on Junior Senior’s 2002 novelty hit ‘Move Your Body’. It’s the quirkiest moment on an album where Minaj is generally more restrained than in the past. Here, she doesn’t play around with alter-egos quite as freely as on ‘Pink Friday’.
Otherwise, though, ‘Pink Friday 2’ feels like a consolidation and refinement of everything Minaj can do – including dropping pop culture references that no other artist would think of. “Ducking ’em like Björk?” That’s surely a wink to the Icelandic musician’s infamous skirmish with a photographer. Thirteen years after ‘Pink Friday’, Nicki Minaj hasn’t lost her ability to catch us by surprise.
