Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded
- Nicki Minaj
- Band Name: Nicki Minaj
- Record Label: Universal Republic
- Release Date: Apr 3, 2012
- Critic Score
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Apr 25, 201291If you enjoy contemporary pop whose market-tested blare offends both rockist philistines and IDM aesthetes, her second album is a worthwhile investment.
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Apr 9, 201280Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, like a Whitman's Sampler, has something chewy for everyone.
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Apr 6, 201280If you believe that art and commerce and provocation and fun – and hip- hop and disco and teen pop – can all be one and the same, here's a record for you.
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Apr 5, 201280You can see Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded as a great rap album dragged down by pandering, but you could equally see it as a triumph that one of the biggest pop records of the year leads off with a half-dozen tracks of blistering, filthy, idea-jammed hip-hop.
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Apr 4, 201275It may not be a definitive knockout punch, but she can keep her title.
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Apr 4, 201274Minaj is at her best-at her most compelling, most ingenious, most human-when she indulges every weird mannerism that comes into her busy brain.
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Aug 22, 201270Nicki's shining moments are her straight-up, hip-hop tracks. [#252, p.87]
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Apr 12, 201270At 22 tracks, its formulaic and mechanistic approach begins to wear thin at times--there's just too much going on to properly digest it all--but as a compendium of chart-ready fodder, Nicki has honed in on precisely what works for her with remarkable ease.
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Apr 3, 201270The album unfolds an immeasurable amalgam of genres and inspirations, all fused together in a diamond-encrusted bubble of futuristic, day-glo hip hop. The energy is palpable, the pace rarely lets up, and personality pervades throughout.
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Apr 6, 201267On all of these songs, Nicki is dartboard focused-- she's rapping harder here than on almost anything from Pink Friday... But much of Roman Reloaded sweats with a too-big-to-fail desperation.
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Apr 3, 201267While Roman Reloaded is certainly more confident than the too-safe Pink Friday, Minaj might need to mature a couple more albums' worth before she's capable of wrangling the many Nickis into coherence.
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Apr 9, 201260Roman Reloaded's triumphs all come early, on the album's hip-hop front end. In full flow, Minaj remains a delight.
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Apr 9, 201260Overlong at 19 tracks, it has its moments.
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Apr 5, 201260Halfway through, as guest rappers stop littering the proceedings, the album does a 90-degree shift and becomes a banging club affair, stuffed with David Guetta-style synth-stompers.
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Apr 5, 201260Unfortunately, her adventurous side is rarely heard in the more radio-friendly jams, which are heartfelt and catchy but less inspired.
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Apr 4, 201260More than it's lack of rap, Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded suffers most from not fully being any one thing, as it's unable to balance multiple approaches into one package.
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Apr 4, 201260Cut the iffy pop off these 19 tracks and you're left with Roman's true four-star empire, but as it is, Roman Reloaded is a frustrating mix of significant and skippable.
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Apr 4, 201260Pop Star Nicki is still going strong so her fans should have nothing to worry about, but those of us who started collecting with the original line should probably just find a new hobby-Mixtape Nicki has been discontinued.
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Apr 2, 201260It's not a classic album, but its contents implicitly argue that the concept of a "classic album" has become irrelevant in 2012 anyway.
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Apr 3, 201255A missed opportunity to progress.
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Oct 8, 201250It lumps together all the rap tracks on the first half, and lets the pop fluff fill the rest.
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Apr 17, 201250Pink Friday: Roman's Revenge isn't bad because of Minaj's cross-dressing it is bad because she often tries on some very banal, characterless outfits.
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Apr 10, 201250It shows range, sure, but it feels so disparate that it's just baffling. Worse, none of these poses and personae actually feel convincing.
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Apr 3, 201250Here both the production and Nicki's delivery border on absurdist theater, at one point devolving into Nicki literally making noises.
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Apr 2, 201250The result is a disjointed, artistically confused release that's not only way too long but also doesn't really ring true as an "album" at all, at least if your definition is a collection of new songs with a central premise or statement that one listens to from start to finish.
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Apr 16, 201240A recipe for disaster which tries to please everybody and ends up being enjoyed by nobody.
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Apr 2, 201240Nicki Minaj's second album is pop postmodernity in an advanced state of hollow, banal meaningless, and the first causality is Minaj herself.
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Apr 2, 201230Tacked on to this mediocre rap album is a ghastly and desperate bid for a hit single that sees Minaj and producer RedOne snatching items from a veritable sale rack of tired Top 40 tricks and tossing them hastily over the most basic synth and drum-machine presets.
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Apr 10, 201220While it's a whopping 19 tracks, half the album is nothing more than bargain-basement pop knockoffs of everyone from Beyoncé to Keri Hilson.
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Apr 3, 201210By doubling down on her cartoonish elements, she's lost all remnants of lyrical ingenuity she around the time "Monster" first leaked, let alone her various mixtapes.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 46 out of 87
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Mixed: 9 out of 87
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Negative: 32 out of 87
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0One of the worst album of the year. Absolutely awful.
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