The Singles Jukebox

Don’t get Eminem started about his oven gloves…

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[6.12]

Anthony Easton: I want Nicki Minaj to sing her way through the Monster Manual. Can you imagine what she would do with a gelatinous cube or a wraith or a god damned owlbear?
[7]

Alex Macpherson: In which Nicki Minaj stops fucking around with merely playing Freddie and Jason and becomes a Hallowe’en nightmare herself, hurling words at a demented beat with both the steely focus of a serial killer and the raving insanity of a lunatic asylum escapee. Remarkably, she also manages to redeem two of the worst aspects of contemporary hip-hop: grocery bag raps and 2010 Eminem. The former, by treating her word associations as weapons rather than punchlines — the stretch from her opponents’ cackling through to the showdown in the Vatican is particularly demonic; the latter, by coaxing from a decade-long hibernation a measure of his own monstrosity. The only let-down sonically is the way Eminem falls off the beat by trying to stuff too many words into the middle of his first verse; a minor conceptual quibble is that, performing as her gay alter ego, Minaj should really have taken Eminem’s homophobic trolling to task on record. In practice, the appeal of Minaj’s outraged vibrato and hearing her go there with the c-word (what other rapper has even dared do this?) outweigh any rational considerations.
[9]

Renato Pagnani: That Nicki manages to keep up with Eminem is more of a commentary on present-day Eminem than it is on Nicki, who is perhaps the only rapper doing interesting things with hashtag rap. But Eminem continues his recent trend of revisiting his old horrorcore shtick, only without any glimmer of humour or wit, casually dropping “faggots” like it’s 1999 again. And there’s only so much crap that Nicki can make up for.
[4]

Kat Stevens: I fully understand that Eminem has ditched the whole idea of dumb-but-funny rapping and is sticking to angry-or-offensive rapping but I can’t bear to listen to him these days. It’s a such a shame, he’s still a gifted dude with an interesting voice, but he doesn’t use it to say things that I want to hear. (Pissing on people? Really?) As it is he’s spoiled this terrifyingly good mish-mash of “Alive” by Daft Punk, someone hitting a biscuit tin, “Flash’s Theme” by Queen and Nicki’s amazing stream of hashtag consciousness.
[8]

Alfred Soto: As an Em track it’s a gross and redundant return to spastic form: he hasn’t sounded this committed to hating faggots since the Dow was over 14,000. But Nicki’s commitment to vitriol matches her onomatopoetic zeal for grunts, groans, lower register descensions, and dragon noises. Swizz Beatz’s stuttering electrobeat makes for the perfect metronome. Every track this nasty should sound this dangerous; every rapper who plays a “character” should study this.
[8]

Alex Ostroff: Would that all of Pink Friday sounded this tense and hungry. Nicki is on top form, and if the ‘dungeon dragon’ refrain isn’t as catchy as the sadly underrated”’Massive Attack”, it’s a far cry better than the drippy R&B choruses we’ve been subjected to on her other singles. Eminem’s verse is a technical marvel but lacks whatever ineffable quality he once had that made him genuinely interesting. Thankfully, Nicki has personality in spades. Plus, the beat is all gothic strings and choral parts, and there’s a bit around 3:20 that sounds like a Nintendo interpolation of Grieg’s “In the Hall of the Mountain King”.
[7]

John Seroff: “Roman’s Revenge” is an excellent example of a lifetime of focus and loads of talent misapplied with stunningly tacky results. Em was doing this same song WAY better twelve years ago with Missy and Timbo, back before he had to take two tortured lines to windup a “two pees in a tripod” punchline. Nicki’s single-minded #hashtag style has never sounded worse than here; the “MANNING, ELI” line is some sort of apotheosis of failed direction. Swizz’s production is remedial, silly and repetitive to the point of self-parody. Busta’s RAOW RAOW LIKE A DUNGEON DRAGON deserves better tribute than this. I’d reroll.
[3]

Mallory O’Donnell: It’s kind of funny how I drunkenly alluded one night in the comments thread to how Nicki Minaj’s whole cadence set is ripped off from Busta Rhymes, but how often the “wackiness” reminds me of nothing so much as a lame attempt at his classic “dungeon dragon” verse on the “Scenario” remix. I truly never expected this talentless wonk to make a whole track out of it. Speaking of predictions, Eminem reminds me of nothing so much as sad, aging white trash trying to “sound like Charlie Manson,” as Leonard Cohen so long ago warned us. Oh, wait, that’s exactly what he is. The worst and most obvious sequel to “Monster” ever. And Korg presets only sounded “scary” and “edgy” in 1998.
[0]

Zach Lyon: It’s a great track and Em kills it just based on cadence alone, and Nicki would get high honors but I am just so sick of hashtags. It’d be a [9] without them. #evenfuckingdrakehasrenouncedthisshit
[7]

Iain Mew: Nicki’s commitment to grocery bagging makes for not so much a flow as a series of ungainly drips, but she’s on form enough to make it work here over a production of humming, barely contained menace. The biggest achievement of “Roman’s Revenge” though is taking Eminem, in recent years reduced to a familiar and boring presence on crossover hits, and making him sound urgent and kind of terrifying again.
[7]

Al Shipley: This is really Shady’s revenge, but even the surprising, momentary return of the young, mean Eminem can’t save this beat, which wouldn’t even get attention on SoundClick if it wasn’t produced by Swizz.
[4]

Chuck Eddy: I basically get the idea they’re both trying too hard, but maybe they’ve just both got a lot to prove. Nicki’s at least funny about it, though — her Dungeons and Dragons stuff out-geeks Taylor Swift’s, and even her hashtags sound like she’s in on the joke of how ridiculous they are. As for Em, I can’t tell here whether he’s meaning to lead a pep rally, revive Slim Shady, or both. Suppose he sounds less tired than he does on most of Recovery. And this shows more life than most of the rest of Pink Friday, too. But I really don’t feel like grading on a curve.
[6]

Doug Robertson: Eminem’s contribution spoils this song, like mustard spoils a cheesecake. It’s his standard rising anger that he can turn out in his sleep these days and quite possibly does. Fortunately, it doesn’t overshadow the brilliance of the rest of the track which spills over with ideas and energy and thrills and all the good stuff you want to hear in something new. Of course, having decided that Eminem hasn’t quite ruined the song enough, they decide to add on an embarrassing bit of “acting” at the end, which leaves a nasty taste in the mouth. But if you’re going to experiment away from the standard recipe book, mistakes are going to be made, and even the fussiest eater is going to find something tasty here.
[8]

Martin Skidmore: I love Nicki’s performance here — her maddest on one of her own singles, I think, which is just what I want from the most exciting new rapper in some years (since The Game, for me). The Eminem guest verses mostly make me wish we had time travel, as I’d love to hear Nicki with the Eminem of, say, 10 years ago: now she is simply so much sharper than him in delivery, so much more inventive lyrically, and so much more relevant and interesting ideologically that it’s not an even team up, and I could have done with more of her.
[9]

Jonathan Bogart: All that fury, those relentless tick-tick snares, ends up just sounding hollow, all foreplay and no payoff. I’m probably just showing my biases here; braggadocio tracks are my least favorite hip-hop genre, and Eminem’s “no homo” bullshit is only icing on the whatever. Nicki’s still a draw, but her bag of tricks is wearing thin. Maybe I do only want to hear her in thirty-second bursts.
[5]

Tom Ewing: The bug-eyed rigidity Eminem trades in nowadays is a pretty good fit for this fight-picking beat, but his imagination isn’t a match for Nicki’s and I wish there was a verse less of him here. As it is, when we get Nicki she’s in full glorious growling flight, but factor out two chunks of Em and one of her English accent (which is improving!) and she seems almost as underused here as on any guest spot you could name. But maybe that’s the point — to cut loose, even on her own album, perhaps she has to give herself someone to outshine?
[6]