mixtape maestro (2.0)

With Nicki Minaj being hyped from several corners of the Inter-Webs as the Great Female Hope of Hip Hop’s (Immediate) Future and currently enjoying major airtime as a featured collaborator on successful singles with Usher, Ludacris and her Young Money crew, you would think that for her first solo single, a stronger effort would have been made by her backers to make sure her transition from hot guest to solid lead act went over as smoothly as possible.

In other words, the last thing we would’ve expected hearing as Nicki’s intro LP jump-off would have been the extreme WTH!! that is “Massive Attack”, a Sean Garrett co-production that’s blatantly gunning for a left-of-center Missy Elliott club banger vibe but ends up landing as a confused mess.

Nicki really isn’t the problem here, actually managing to stay somewhat interesting over the first two sixteens with fierce-ish Barbie spittage like “So call me Simba little mama/ Cause Mufasa couldn’t stop a bitch/ I fly in on that choppa just to buy Balenciaga”, but what’s with all that busy clatter she’s rhyming above (A cacophonous massive attack against the eardrums with it’s militaristic/ tribal drumwork and Transformers-transforming-sounding siren synths exploding every which way but on a beat you can comfortably rock to) or the odd-patois-inflections Garrett adopts on a hook that bears little actual hookiness (and starts us re-wondering why we were ever supposed to care about this cat) or the weird detour the production takes in the bridge, suddenly deciding that it wants to be sensitive with the jarring addition of bedroom R&B pianos?

It’s a potential grower (with the Hype Williams-directed accompanying clip slightly making it go down a lil’ easier), but for now…we just don’t get it.