Nicki Minaj - Queen (Deluxe Edition) (2018) Hi Res

To reign over the charts, the critics, and the streets, a hip-hop star with pop ambitions must be everything to everyone while holding on tight to their identity. This balancing act is especially unforgiving for women, and Nicki Minaj has contended with these double standards and sky-high expectations for over a decade. Her biggest chart successes have come with songs like 2014’s bawdy “Anaconda,” and the effervescent “Super Bass” from her 2010 debut, but there are still incessant calls for some combination of the take-no-prisoners snarl of her breakout verse on “Monster” and serious art made up of reflection and maturity. But with Queen, Nicki jettisons all the industry madness, drowns out the noise, and creates rap the way she believes it should sound.

Due to hip-hop’s sexist, one-at-a-time cap on women dominating the genre, this is the first time Nicki has ever released an album with another commercially successful woman also climbing rap’s ranks. And whatever pressure whether real or spectator-projected is there, she rises to the occasion with Queen, her most rap-oriented full-length to date. Never lacking for charisma and attitude, her flows and cadences are a whirlwind of husky aggression and bouncing animation. She sends shots in every direction (“Don’t duck if it don’t apply,” she sneers on one track) with the confidence of a woman holding court in a kingdom she conquered. From Michael Jackson to Sizzla to Patti Labelle, she drops so many names and references that someone could get a halfway decent music (fashion and sports too) lesson if they Googled them all. They spill out as both venerating homages and a testament to her high-powered lifestyle.

With the album’s contentious rollout, marred by social media drama and middling singles, Nicki really buried the two big ledes here. “Barbie Dreams,” which adapts Notorious B.I.G.’s “Just Playing (Dreams)” and updates Nicki’s own “Dreams 07” cut from her 2007 mixtape Playtime Is Over, is a flamethrowing pink slip delivered with a wink. Positioning some of rap’s biggest names in her crosshairs, she playfully jabs at her peers, turning their reputations into reasons they won’t be seeing her in the bedroom. It highlights the kind of quick wit and humor that earned her the spotlight to begin with. And in a proud display of her Caribbean background, she enlists fellow Trini-rhymer Foxy Brown for the patois-flavored “Coco Chanel.” The two share a magnetic synergy as they trade verses over a dancehall production that interpolates the classic Showtime Riddim. The cross-generational collaboration is significant particularly for Nicki, who is rarely caught on wax with other female rappers and considers Brown an idol.