Nicki Minaj: First studio album in five years

Pink Friday 2 - Nicki Minaj: First studio album in five years

Nicki Minaj is certainly one of those outsized music stars of the 21st century: she keeps in constant contact with her fans called "Barbz" via social networks, she is not satisfied with the usual genre boundaries such as pop or hip-hop and she does not limit her public appearances to music alone.

In 2021, Minaj made headlines with statements that "a cousin's friend" had become impotent due to the coronavirus vaccination- even the Ministry of Health in her native Trinidad and Tobago criticized her for her unscientific vaccination scepticism. To this day, she shrugs her shoulders in the face of such criticism and explains that she likes to see for herself.

Delays time and again

From Friday (8.12.), however, Minaj will finally be back to making music. That's when "Pink Friday 2" will be released, the first studio album in five years, just in time for her 41st birthday. The release has been delayed again and again, but now Minaj is certain: the sequel to her 2010 hit "Pink Friday" is a great success. You can shake your hips to at least ten songs, she wrote on the short message service X.

In the end, she picked the track list for the album from around 60 songs, a collaboration with Canadian superstar Drake has already been announced and there are also plans for a world tour. A week ago, she showed her 228 million fans on Instagram the bottle of the perfume for the album, available from the US department store chain JC Penney.

Technicians can sing a song

The rapper and songwriter is considered a perfectionist: nine years ago, she is said to have worked on 27 versions of her hit "Anaconda" until she was satisfied, and she has a reputation for demanding a lot from the technicians in the studio.

In a cover story published in November to coincide with the album release, she revealed to fashion magazine"Vogue" that she is "a bit special". "Sometimes there are things that the best sound engineer in the world doesn't hear. I hear them," Minaj explained. "And you know what? I'm always right."

Two pre-release singles are already out. "Super Freaky Girl" initially led Minaj back into rap territory in August and brought her a number 1 hit in the US Billboard charts. Anyone in the audience still hoping for bubblegum pop after the 2010 megahit "Starships", the accessible "Anaconda" or the summer cover "Barbie Girl", which she released with rapper Ice Spice and the original band Aqua, may have been disappointed.

The second track, "Last Time I Saw You", then came out at the beginning of September in a more reduced form and had melancholy lyrics about a break-up. "It's a song about guilt," Minaj told Vogue. "I don't think people make enough music about the experience of guilt. But if you talk to any human being in the world about it, they know exactly what you mean."

Such statements seem more rested than is usual in the rap business, but in the days leading up to the release of"Pink Friday 2", the genre-standard pomposity is back. "A brilliant, iconic, thought-provoking, beautiful piece of work", wrote Minaj on X. "My best yet."