--- title: Nick Minaj Queen Album Review: Pushing Boundaries and Beats description: Queen asserts Minaj's rightful place if not at the top, then certainly near it. It's filled with A-list guests and boundary-pushing beats. canonical: https://time.com/5364696/nicki-minaj-queen-album-review/ author: Maura Johnston article:opinion: false article:content_tier: free article:published_time: 2018-08-11T15:09:47.000Z article:modified_time: 2026-02-23T21:07:33.860Z article:section: Entertainment og:title: Nicki Minaj's Introspective New Album Reasserts Her Place Near the Top og:description: 'Queen' demands up-close listening og:url: https://time.com/5364696/nicki-minaj-queen-album-review/ og:site_name: TIME og:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbb28255bbc054be1/6988d376cf40a8a557c484ec/nicki-minaj-nba.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 og:image:width: 1200 og:image:height: 675 og:image:alt: 2017 NBA Awards Live On TNT - Inside og:type: article twitter:card: summary_large_image twitter:title: Nicki Minaj's Introspective New Album Reasserts Her Place Near the Top twitter:description: 'Queen' demands up-close listening twitter:image: https://static.time.com/v3/assets/bltea6093859af6183b/bltbb28255bbc054be1/6988d376cf40a8a557c484ec/nicki-minaj-nba.jpg?branch=production&width=3840&quality=75&auto=webp&crop=16:9 ---  # Nicki Minaj's Introspective New Album _Queen_ Reasserts Her Place Near the Top by [Maura Johnston](https://time.com/author/maura-johnston/) ## Maura Johnston Aug 11, 2018 3:09 PM UTC  Nicki Minaj performs on stage during the 2017 NBA Awards Live On TNT on June 26, 2017 in New York City. Nicki Minaj performs on stage during the 2017 NBA Awards Live On TNT on June 26, 2017 in New York City.Michael Loccisano—Getty Images by [Maura Johnston](https://time.com/author/maura-johnston/) ## Maura Johnston Aug 11, 2018 3:09 PM UTC In the nearly four years since Nicki Minaj released her third album _The Pinkprint_, a lot has happened: the U.S. elected a chaos-inducing president, [the #MeToo movement took off](http://time.com/5015204/harvey-weinstein-scandal/), [Kanye West](http://time.com/5299364/kanye-west-ye-album-review/) and Taylor Swift ran hot and cold multiple times. But perhaps most crucially for the Queens-born MC, a cross-borough rival — the reality star-turned-pop sensation Cardi B — emerged from the mixtape and Instagram wilds, her boastful breakthrough single “Bodak Yellow” topping the Hot 100\. While Minaj was hardly dormant during her between-album intermission, collaborating with pop supernovas like Ariana Grande and Madonna as well as MCs like her Young Money labelmates Drake and Lil Wayne, the possibility of pitting two women against each other in the male-dominated world of hip-hop proved too tantalizing for tongue-waggers. _Queen_ (Young Money/Cash Money/Republic), which came out Friday, is Minaj’s attempt to muzzle the gossip folks, a wild ride stuffed with A-list guests (in addition to Grande, Eminem, Rae Sremmurd’s Swae Lee, and Lil Wayne drop by) where Minaj immerses herself in hip-hop history and her own emotional trials. While casual listeners might know Minaj best from the [sparkling 2011 single “Super Bass”](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4JipHEz53sU) and the eye-popping hair colors she sported during that period, _Queen_ marks her territory as a hip-hop artist who hasn’t let her travels around the world make her forget the lessons she absorbed while she went around the block. _Queen_ opens with Minaj in pensive mode, smoking weed and ruminating on the forces aligning against her on “Ganja Burns” — people biting her style while using ghostwriters, energy-sucking men, people whose memories won’t stop lingering. But she doesn’t brood for long, embracing the “living well is the best revenge” ideal instead — flipping a script originally written by Brooklyn legend The Notorious B.I.G. on the raunchy (yet appreciative) “Barbie Dreams;” thrilling in the internal rhymes on the drug-laden chorus of “Miami;” shouting out Caribbean musicians over the clamorous beat of “Coco Chanel,” which features fellow Trinidiadian-New Yorker Foxy Brown. They balance out the more introspective moments, like the Weeknd-assisted sulk “Thought I Knew You” and the longing “Come See About Me” — the latter of which features Minaj singing to someone whose absence hollows out her success. Minaj is a restless lyricist who thrills in her audacity almost as soon as she realizes it, although her tendencies toward rhyming a word with itself can get a bit monotonous, particularly across the wide span of a 19-track, hour-plus album. _Queen_‘s beats — crafted by producers like the Atlanta trap architect Mike Will Made-It and the Drake associate Boi-1da — straddle the boundary between 2018 and the next wave in a way that demands up-close listening. For the most part, its guests seem energized to bring their A-game, with Eminem rapping like he’s trying to put out a fire on the woozy “Majesty,” Grande supplying fizzy vocal runs to the seductive “Bed” and Swae Lee of the brotherly rap duo Rae Sremmurd offering up an oddly beautiful hook on the fever-dreamy “Chun Swae.” If there’s one recent blockbuster release that _Queen_ recalls, it’s Rihanna’s _Anti_ — similarly accompanied by regal themes, that 2016 album balanced A-lister boasts with solitary, substance-aided introspection. Like _Queen_, _Anti­_ was introduced by splashy tracks (“Bed” and “Chun-Li” for _Queen,_ the sinewy Drake collab “Work” for _Anti_) made for maximum radio impact; deeper dives revealed more complex emotions, fleshing out the person behind the social-media avatar in sometimes-messy ways. And like _Anti, Queen_ asserts Minaj’s rightful place if not at the top, then certainly near it — and perhaps more importantly, it makes one realize that even world-beating achievements and high-end brands can’t blot out a person’s need for intimacy. ```json [{"@context":"https://schema.org","@type":"NewsArticle","@id":"https://time.com/5364696/nicki-minaj-queen-album-review/","mainEntityOfPage":{"@type":"WebPage","@id":"https://time.com/5364696/nicki-minaj-queen-album-review/"},"headline":"Nicki Minaj's Introspective New Album Queen Reasserts Her Place Near the Top","datePublished":"2018-08-11T15:09:47.000Z","dateModified":"2026-02-23T21:07:33.860Z","description":"Queen asserts Minaj's rightful place if not at the top, then certainly near it. 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