The Singles Jukebox

Aaaand that’s a nope. Sorry, Nicki.

[Video][Website]
[3.17]

Micha Cavaseno: Years ago I made a casual joke to friends that Nicki Minaj, a Sagittarius, does not know when to stop and will undermine everything she’d achieved at that point by exhausting her audience beyond diehards. One of those friends rolled their eyes and asked me if the then infinitely unnecessary Jay-Z (hot off that diabolically boring Magna Carta) was a Sagittarius, and he is. Well folks, it’s 2017 and I am sick to fucking death of my home of Jamaica, Queens’ 2nd most incredible rapper ever. Nicki has not advanced far beyond the same flows she’d demonstrated 8 years ago with mastery and ease. In fact, now they sound rigid and her punchline game has gone dead like milk. What’s especially irritating is that “No Frauds”, essentially a rejoinder to fellow NYC “femcee” Remy Ma’s diss tracks is a cynical attempt at profiting off the drama by trying to make a catchy single. That’d be fine, except it’s a hollow Drakk-lite track, so it’s extra levels of pandering that make the Papoose into a ghostwriter, and he rhymes with pap smear bars that stick in your craw like bone splinters. In the meantime, to three-peat the potential for making this ‘attention-worthy’, she’s reunited with her old cohorts Wayne and Drakk after the three biggest stars of Young Money had been seemingly distanced by careering. Drakk is as usual in a land of delusion, accusing others of playing the thug while acting like police, like his good friend Norm Kelly hasn’t jokingly threatened to ban his rivals from Canada for the sake of seeming ‘hipness’. And Wayne basically sounds like a lesser version of his stylistic sons and grandsons these days. But to be fair to everyone here, their point of peak freshness and vitality truly was almost a decade ago.
[0]

Hannah Jocelyn: Nicki, round 3: a response to “shEther” that she headlines, aided by Drake and Lil Wayne. There are some good disses from her (“‘Back to Back’? Me and Drizzy laughed at that” and the especially harsh “What type of mother leave her one son over a stack?”), but it’s a slog to hear. It doesn’t really justify its length either. Besides, if you’re making the response five minutes, why not go and make it seven like Remy did? Why not forget the chorus altogether? I get the motive of making a hit record vs a diss record, but this is so boring that it doesn’t function as either. 
[4]

Thomas Inskeep: The big beat booms, Nicki spits diss lyrics towards Remy Ma (who ain’t even in her ballpark, really), and Drake and Wayne stop by for moral support. To be honest, there’s nothing here they haven’t done together before, and done better.
[4]

Will Adams: Even Nicki responding to Keys seven years ago — via a green wig, lo-res live stream, and vague not-naming-names statements — felt unnecessary. Why we’re being treated to an entire song with a dull beat stretched thin across duller verses in 2017 is beyond me.
[3]

Alfred Soto: “What kind of bum” indeed — my reaction to hearing the same flow, beat, and posturing from these trio.
[3]

Ryo Miyauchi: Even Nicki herself knows all her collected receipts isn’t actually necessary to hit back Remy Ma when you’re, you know, Nicki Minaj — why else would you call up Drake and Lil Wayne for the roast? She alludes to that much by shouting out Ellen Degeneres on a first name basis, like Anna Wintour in “Come on a Cone.” But there’s also her callback to “Back to Back,” a diss response that Remy hijacked as an attempt at savvy strategy. Nicki and Drake laughed at that less from the actual content than the fact their enemy followed Meek Mill vs. Drake, but didn’t get why the loser fell so hard.
[5]