‘Pink Friday,’ The Soundtrack of the Decade, Turns Ten

Oh, Nicki.

“Pink Friday” is, arguably, one of the best albums ever made. Nicki Minaj’s singular 2010 debut, in the ever-erratic matrix of 21st century pop culture, demands a spot at the front of the pack. From the Greek myth-level first track, “I’m The Best,” she cements her campy lyrical style and, over the remaining 13 tracks, recruits a class of A-listers for her album-length takedown of any and all critics’ expectations. She is at once the decade’s pop cultural blueprint and its muse, certainly the most joyous, confounding woman rapper of the past decade — and the album that launched her onto the A-list is a blast of giddy, unforgettable fun.

As is well-known by fans, Minaj came from Trinidad to Queens, shuttled through LaGuardia High, and spent nights working at Red Lobster while in an off-Broadway play — juggling various short-term recording contracts until 2009. With a barrage of features (most notably Kanye West’s “Monster”) under her belt, she signed with Lil Wayne’s Cash Money Records in 2009 to release a pop-influenced album. In a 2010 interview for Entertainment Weekly, Minaj proclaimed, “I felt like for so many years I was the girl who did the catchy little raps, and it's time for me now to tell my story, and in telling my story, I'm really telling every girl's story.”

The album see-saws between high-intensity pop confections, gritty rap tracks, and quasi-rock songs — an uneven trio to pull off her stated objective, even in theory. But the fissures between these genres are exactly the point. Who else would dare sample Annie Lennox on a track that flies through Biblical metaphors, features a video cloaked in Enya-adjacent capes, and has a pre-chorus with the line “And for your loving, I’ma die hard like Bruce Willis”? Who else would spin an alter-ego of a vengeful Roman and the refrain “Rah, rah, like a dungeon dragon” into a song with the scale of a feature film? The list of risks goes on and on. It doesn’t matter that some of the ambition falls into corniness and disarray, or that some of the confessional lyrics overestimate their true heft. This album, as Minaj intended, can be every girl’s story because there are so many expansive possibilities packed inside.

Amid this whirlpool of energy, sentimentality remains at the base of Minaj’s productions. “Super Bass” is both a banging classic made for group-rapping and an almost heartbreaking ask for romance before the object of her affection loses interest. “Moment 4 Life” is at once a premonition of her monumental career and a recognition that it’ll pass. These songs are whimsical, trap-pop endorsements of this seminal message: Minaj’s intimacy is no joke.

It’s all, in a way, queer. As club songs blur into ballads, listeners must stay alert to how the project will shapeshift next. Her experimentations with vocal performance (her pitch and tone glides, and those rolled r’s!) astound in their humor; she knows how to work a microphone to massive effect. Any possible sonic and emotional boundary in her way is paid no mind. It’s also, in case the cutting raps weren’t enough, a warning: do not mess with Nicki Minaj.

This sensibility birthed the Barbz, the most ruthless intelligence force the world has ever known. Named for Minaj’s focus on the Barbie (her subversion of Disney cotton-candy tropes is another stroke of brilliance), this amorphous group of stans will expose and shame racists, go after anybody who says as much as one negative word about their queen, and fancam until they die. They have followed Minaj throughout her career, carrying hilarity, scamming, and a fair share of infamy in their wake, and have spearheaded an irreverently hive-minded model of online engagement in celebrity culture.

Minaj carries the monumental weight of culture behind her, not just in her fashion, music videos, and fanbase, but in the very grammar of online humor. A disproportionate number of the cheeky clapbacks used in online discourse can be harkened back to some shock of a Minaj lyric, or “did-she-really-say-that?” quote. Lil Nas X, the Gen Z darling who last year usurped Mariah Carey’s spot for the longest-running Billboard Hot 100 song, just confirmed the long-running rumors that he kickstarted his superstardom as the owner of none other than a Minaj fan account.

And yet Minaj’s project is not, and was never, all new. Look at the daring of Missy Elliot’s concept albums, think about Lil’ Kim’s sex appeal, consider Queen Latifah’s bragaddocio and Mary J. Blige’s swagger. Minaj’s album threads all of these women’s influences into its toughness and ease, its obsession with being the absolute best. She has the world of women rappers to both thank and vehemently criticize — ensuring she will have a legacy amongst these names, one equally charged with controversy as with triumph. But, as Minaj’s daring debut proves, both controversy and rigor of craft is necessary for her stardom, many might say icon-status, to have any lasting meaning at all.

Minaj, as is required to survive as an A-lister in the capitalist flows of the global pop scene, has dutifully grown the album’s brand into a perfume, bunches of merch, and two follow-up LPs: “Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded'' and “Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded - The Re-Up.” If “Pink Friday” is akin to a debut novel, these two albums are in effect a short story collection — the former a dancepop showcase, and the latter a more bracing, trap-laced work — both expanding and honoring the original. The follow-ups allow listeners to hear Minaj’s artistic interests when they have room to breathe and grow, her brand blooming along with the music. Take a glance through some of the enduring tracks, “Beez In The Trap”, “High School”, and, of course, “Stupid Hoe”, and the throughline from “Pink Friday”’s aerobic charisma is undeniable. The risk of the album did, in nearly every sense of the word, pay off.

On “Roman’s Revenge," Minaj asks, “Is the thanks that I get for putting you bitches on?” If she didn’t receive her gratitude then, she certainly does now, and in droves. In myriad ways, fans are still tethered to the artistic vision of “Pink Friday,” the album that catapulted Minaj onto the world’s stage. For any still in doubt of her roaring power, she leaves them this assured message on “I’m The Best,” having already proved herself: “You might get addressed on the second album,” she raps, and then speeds right on her way to the top.