She Really Is The Best

Nicki Minaj “Chun-Li”

“They need rappers like me!,” Nicki Minaj insists midway through “Chun-Li,” one of the most fierce performances she’s delivered over the past few years. This moment is fascinating to me because this is both a show of swaggering strength and raw vulnerability. She is totally convinced of her value, but finds herself in the position of reminding everyone else. She sounds imperious, exasperated, and exhausted. But she also sounds like someone to prove, and that underdog energy which served her so well up through her breakout performance on Kanye West’s “Monster” is what gives the chorus of this song its charge. A lot of the lyrics in this track boil down to her refusing to let the media or anyone else (re)define her, though she does seem happy to embrace the role of the villain: “They need rappers like me so they can get on their fucking keyboards and make me the bad guy, Chun-Li!” I love the ambiguity of the word “keyboards” – it could be people in the press or on social media, or it can be a producer putting together a track to bring out her darkest, most aggressive side.

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