Nicki Minaj – Pink Friday

Since her sudden rise to prominence, Nicki Minaj has been the subject of constant debate: depending on who you ask. “She charismatically revived the presence of females in hip hop” or the “She’s just a talentless pretty face.”

She has many featured singles on the Billboard top 100 chart. Turning on the radio was a near guarantee that you’d encounter Minaj at some point, who provided verses to no less than ten major songs in 2010, including Ludacris‘ “My Chick Bad,” Usher‘s “Lil’ Freak” and Trey Songz‘ “Bottoms Up.” which made fans anxious as to what her album was going to sound like and piled on the pressure for her to deliver greatness.

Minaj seems to take herself relatively seriously as a woman: despite the shots delivered back and forth, that she’s no Lil Kim, or, for that matter, Foxy Brown. Those women, along with many of the few successful female MC’s in history are sex toys, presenting little more in their music than sensual noise.

In a world where male electro-R&B superstars dominate much of today’s US radio charts, Minaj’s playfully insane inflection and bright pink wigs provided some much-needed color to shake up the recycled radio productions–not to mention some incredible lyrics to boot. Truly, Minaj’s verses just kept getting better as the year went on. By the time Kanye West‘s “Monster” arrived, it was clear that Nicki was unstoppable.

After spending over 3 years hyping this debut–building up a cheeky, fun-loving persona, a band of fiercely loyal followers (Barbies) and even her own concocted vocabulary (the Nictionary), Nicki Minaj has seemingly taken the winning formula that turned her into an overnight major label superstar and successfully proved herself.

The suspicion is that the hype simply grew too great. With so much riding on this debut as the first female MC to top the charts in years, Minaj could do nothing but put down the pink mangoes featured on her mixtapes and guest verses, stand her ground and bare her teeth. She’s not playing around on this record–she’s marking her territory and claiming her rightful title of ‘1^st lady of hip hop’ today.