流行樂壇新晉說唱女王妮琪米娜

Four years ago, Nicki Minaj rose to the forefront of the rap mainstream by sPitting fire over Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy track Monster, leaving her legendary collaborators a pile of smoldering ash and gold chains. Two number one albums later, it’s clear sitting at the grown ups’ table has had an effect on Minaj’s mindset — she’s thinking big and reaching as far as she can with her talents.

四年前，憑藉在坎耶•維斯特專輯My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy中Monster一歌的驚豔表現，妮琪•米娜一躍躋身主流說唱音樂最前沿，令與之合作的傳奇歌手們黯然失色。隨後連續兩張專輯佔據榜首，很明顯，一戰成名讓妮琪的想法發生了改變——她的目標更加遠大，她正竭盡所能走得更遠。

Young Money’s queen bee has never been shy about her desire to bend hip-hop to her will, and her experimentation hasn’t always gone over well with critics. The release of her last album, the pop-heavy Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, drew ire from some rap enthusiasts. Minaj, they claimed, had sold out. With lead single Starships, critics said Minaj had veered too far into pop territory.

這位Young Money唱片公司的女王從不掩飾自己想要按照自己的想法改變嘻哈音樂的雄心，但她的嘗試之路卻屢遭批評，並不順暢。她的最新專輯Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded因爲濃厚的流行音樂氣息，引起了一些饒舌發燒友的憤怒。他們認爲米娜背叛了饒舌音樂。而一些樂評人也認爲，主打歌Starships包含了過多的流行音樂元素。

“Starships is a blatant pop song,” hip-hop critic Peter Rosenberg told NPR’s Radiolab. “When core hip-hop artists make pop songs it upsets me because it can be a moment that blurs and messes up hip-hop.”

嘻哈音樂評論人皮特•羅森伯格在美國國家公共電臺的Radiolab節目中說： “《Starships》完全就是一首流行歌曲，主流嘻哈藝人演唱流行歌曲令我擔憂，因爲這將會模糊嘻哈的概念、混淆視聽。”

Minaj was unfazed by the criticism ahead of the release of The Pink Print, her third LP.

面對這些批評，米娜泰然自若，正準備發行第三張唱片The Pink Print。

“I’m just going to do what my heart tells me to do,” she told MTV.

“我只是聽從內心的聲音。”她這樣告訴MTV。

Still, Minaj said that after taking her music so far to the left, she realized in order to move forward, she’d need to return to the style that brought her the attention of so many early on in her career.

然而，米娜也表示，在劍走偏鋒的嘗試過後，她意識到，要想更進一步，她仍需迴歸當初使她名聲大噪的音樂風格。

“The tracks on my next album are back to my hip-hop roots,” she told MTV.

她對MTV表示：“我下一張專輯的歌曲會重現我最初的嘻哈風格。”

Thus far, it seems this isn’t just pre-album puffery.

目前來看，這並不像是在爲新專輯做前期宣傳。

On The Pink Print single Anaconda, which heavily samples Sir Mix-a-Lot’s infamous and infectious Baby Got Back, Minaj effortlessly steps back into the explicit, brag-filled lyricism that’s proven the most potent ingredient in her formula.

The Pink Print的先發單曲Anaconda效仿了Sir Mix-a-Lot聲名狼藉的洗腦歌Baby Got Back。在歌曲中，Minaj從容地迴歸了她直率的風格與自誇式的抒情——這已經被證明是她最有力的表達方式。

While it’s too soon to say whether The Pink Print will find Minaj fully back in her preferred scorched earth mode, I remain hopeful. If hip-hop needs anything right now, it’s a female artist who can offer a more legitimate claim to the genre’s crown than Iggy Azalea.

儘管現在就斷言米娜的新專輯The Pink Print將完全迴歸她所青睞的焦土之風還爲時過早，但我對此抱有極大希望。如今的嘻哈音樂急需一個比阿米莉亞•凱利更有資格的女歌手來稱王稱後。