Four years ago, Nicki Minaj rose to the forefront of the rap mainstream by spitting fire over Kanye West’s My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy track Monster, leaving her legendary collaborators a pile of smoldering ash and gold chains. Two number one albums later, it’s clear sitting at the grown ups’ table has had an effect on Minaj’s mindset — she’s thinking big and reaching as far as she can with her talents.
四年前，凭借在坎耶•维斯特专辑My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy中Monster一歌的惊艳表现，妮琪•米娜一跃跻身主流说唱音乐最前沿，令与之合作的传奇歌手们黯然失色。随后连续两张专辑占据榜首，很明显，一战成名让妮琪的想法发生了改变——她的目标更加远大，她正竭尽所能走得更远。

Young Money’s queen bee has never been shy about her desire to bend hip-hop to her will, and her experimentation hasn’t always gone over well with critics. The release of her last album, the pop-heavy Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, drew ire from some rap enthusiasts. Minaj, they claimed, had sold out. With lead single Starships, critics said Minaj had veered too far into pop territory.
这位Young Money唱片公司的女王从不掩饰自己想要按照自己的想法改变嘻哈音乐的雄心，但她的尝试之路却屡遭批评，并不顺畅。她的最新专辑Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded因为浓厚的流行音乐气息，引起了一些饶舌发烧友的愤怒。他们认为米娜背叛了饶舌音乐。而一些乐评人也认为，主打歌Starships包含了过多的流行音乐元素。
“Starships is a blatant pop song,” hip-hop critic Peter Rosenberg told NPR’s Radiolab. “When core hip-hop artists make pop songs it upsets me because it can be a moment that blurs and messes up hip-hop.”
嘻哈音乐评论人皮特•罗森伯格在美国国家公共电台的Radiolab节目中说： “《Starships》完全就是一首流行歌曲，主流嘻哈艺人演唱流行歌曲令我担忧，因为这将会模糊嘻哈的概念、混淆视听。”
Minaj was unfazed by the criticism ahead of the release of The Pink Print, her third LP.
面对这些批评，米娜泰然自若，正准备发行第三张唱片The Pink Print。
“I’m just going to do what my heart tells me to do,” she told MTV.
“我只是听从内心的声音。”她这样告诉MTV。
Still, Minaj said that after taking her music so far to the left, she realized in order to move forward, she’d need to return to the style that brought her the attention of so many early on in her career.
然而，米娜也表示，在剑走偏锋的尝试过后，她意识到，要想更进一步，她仍需回归当初使她名声大噪的音乐风格。
“The tracks on my next album are back to my hip-hop roots,” she told MTV.
她对MTV表示：“我下一张专辑的歌曲会重现我最初的嘻哈风格。”
Thus far, it seems this isn’t just pre-album puffery.
目前来看，这并不像是在为新专辑做前期宣传。
On The Pink Print single Anaconda, which heavily samples Sir Mix-a-Lot’s infamous and infectious Baby Got Back, Minaj effortlessly steps back into the explicit, brag-filled lyricism that’s proven the most potent ingredient in her formula.
The Pink Print的先发单曲Anaconda效仿了Sir Mix-a-Lot声名狼藉的洗脑歌Baby Got Back。在歌曲中，Minaj从容地回归了她直率的风格与自夸式的抒情——这已经被证明是她最有力的表达方式。
While it’s too soon to say whether The Pink Print will find Minaj fully back in her preferred scorched earth mode, I remain hopeful. If hip-hop needs anything right now, it’s a female artist who can offer a more legitimate claim to the genre’s crown than Iggy Azalea.
尽管现在就断言米娜的新专辑The Pink Print将完全回归她所青睐的焦土之风还为时过早，但我对此抱有极大希望。如今的嘻哈音乐急需一个比阿米莉亚•凯利更有资格的女歌手来称王称后。