Nicki Minaj, "Your Love"

[krazymack]

Nicki Minaj is a new artist getting a lot of buzz on the charts as a contemporary female rap act. She's a part of Lil' Wayne's "Young Money Entertainment" label. Her song, "Your Love" has turned into a multi-format smash. The song samples Annie Lennox's "No More ‘I Love You’s’."

www.youtube.com/watch?v=YE7wWX4tgHA

[a Nick O!]

While it's refreshing to have a (new) female rapper on the scene, it feels like by going by the stage name Nicki Minaj (I'm aware her last name is Maraj), she's selling herself short as shallow sex trash. (I mean, if she went by, say, "Nicki Mirage," there'd at least be some more mystique to her persona. Plus, all the different accents she deploys feel like an annoying crutch rather than anything compelling.

I do like this song okay, though, just because it has the built-in familiarity of the Annie Lennox sample. I heard this song on the radio the same day I read about (and listened) to Eminem's Haddaway-sampling "No Love" on YouTube last month. Two WTF-'90s-hit-sampling songs in the same day. It was wild.

[blahblahblah]

I don't mind this song. But I can't help but laugh whenever I hear this line: "When I was a geisha he was a samurai/Somehow I understood him when he spoke Thai." Cultural reference fail.