Review: Nicki Minaj shoots blanks with 'Roman Reloaded'

I heard Trey Songz’ 2010 hit with Nicki Minaj, “Bottoms Up,” on the radio the other day, and was struck by the sheer wizardry of Minaj’s cameo. In just under a minute, Minaj plays three different characters, barks at a suitor, orders a few drinks, shouts out Anna Nicole Smith and makes the convincing argument that she needs to be institutionalized. It is thrilling, full of personality and beaming with life. And it’s everything Minaj’s new album, “Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded” is not.

“Roman Reloaded,” which clocks in at an exhausting 70 minutes, is a slog to wade through. It opens with “Roman Holiday,” the abysmal, grating pop-rap showpiece Minaj debuted at this year’s Grammys, and from there spins through a series of tracks designed to show off Minaj’s street side, her radio side, her rap side, her pop side, her R&B side and her dance side. All of her sides. But the result is an unconvincing mishmash of styles that is schizophrenic and underdeveloped, and feels both overstuffed and rushed. In short, it’s a mess.

There’s no doubt that Nicki Minaj is the most colorful personality hip-hop has produced in years. Her early run of cameos on songs from Mariah Carey to Robin Thicke to Kanye West painted her as a dynamo MC and a kinetic ball of energy; she was impossible to keep up with, yet it was a gas to watch her dominate everyone and everything with which she came in contact. Her 2010 debut, “Pink Friday,” was not the hard-edged album many wanted from her; it found her favoring her pop side, painting herself as a big dreamer and a role model for the self-affirmation set. It was disappointing to fans but it successfully made her a huge pop star, and among its highlights was the bubbly “Super Bass,” a tacked-on bonus cut that went on to become one of 2011′s biggest — and best — hits.

Even using “Pink Friday” as a yardstick, “Roman Reloaded” seems lost. A mid-album stretch of songs, including “Starships,” “Pound the Alarm,” “Whip It,” “Automatic” and “Beautiful Sinner,” recast Minaj as a generic dance club diva, lost in a sea of pounding bass and EDM flourishes. The songs could just as easily be credited to Katy Perry, or Jessie J, or Generic Club Singer No. 7, and there’s nothing to indicate Minaj even likes EDM, let alone has anything to do with the creation of these songs. From there she falls into “Marilyn Monroe,” a syrupy song about putting oneself together and questioning the status of her relationship. It kicks off  a suite of mid-tempo pop-R&B jams that drift in and out of each other indiscriminately. “Stupid Hoe,” the misguided first single that tanked the album’s planned February release, rounds out the set.

For fans of early Nicki, the album’s first third is the most satisfying, and finds her dropping verses alongside Lil Wayne, Young Jeezy, 2 Chainz and more. This is Nicki the bar-spitter, and she excels on songs such as the spacey “Champion” and the old-school-feeling “Beez in the Trap,” wrapping her words around rough, hard-strewn beats.

But the worst part about “Roman Reloaded” is that its existence is largely unnecessary. Hip-hop is a carnivorous culture that is constantly eating itself and turning to whatever is the latest and greatest, but “Pink Friday” had enough legs — and continues to have enough legs — that Minaj could have comfortably waited another six months to a year to follow it up. There was no need to rush out an inferior project, especially one that is so grabby to current trends and without any real sense of purpose or center. Rather than setting the pace herself, she seems to be kowtowing to others, and she’s enough of a leader at this point that she should be following her own muse.

“I am the female Weezy,” Minaj is apt to say, and she says so at the close of “Stupid Hoe.” At least with regards to her mentor’s slippery grip on quality control, in this instance, she’s right. GRADE: D+