Can Nicki Minaj cure hip-hop's misogyny?

Can Nicki Minaj cure hip-hop's misogyny?

Often praised as one of the most talented MC's -- female or otherwise -- in today's ever-evolving rap game, "Nicki Minaj":http://www.thegrio.com/entertainment/nicki-minaj-hip-hops-leading-lady-if-not-her-who.php has an indisputably tight flow, swag for days, and the kind of business savvy that would make even Jay-Z proud. And her unique blend of feminine hip-hop sensibility is poised to pan out: the hype surrounding this week's release of her debut album, _Pink Friday_ is palpable. However, the mainstream commercial acceptance she's already achieved with her over-the-top, multiple-personality, plasticized, black Barbie persona ought to make us all think twice. At what point does the narrative of an aggressive female hip-hop artist with crazy sex appeal, and solid street sensibilities become just the opposite -- a tale of faux-bravado, empty rhetoric, and deceptive stage gimmicks that only thinly masks a desperation to transcend the confines of one's true identity? And what does it mean for our music and our people if mainstream black culture can't tell the difference? Click here to view a slideshow of theGrio's favorite female MC's Minaj's rap persona is characterized by a brash, sometimes bizarre, and usually playful attitude complemented by multiple accents (her British accent is my personal favorite), characters, and methods of delivery for her verses. She raps as both herself and a caricature of herself simultaneously, straddling the line between hip-hop and theater all while providing few dull moments for her fans over the course of her career. She was famously introduced by DJ Khaled at this year's BET awards as "Nicki Minaj, Nicki Minaj, Nicki Minaj, Nicki Minaj, and Nicki Minaj", an introduction she honored by accepting the mic using five different voices. Though she sometimes employs the same levels of sexual raunchiness set forth by her female predecessors like Lil' Kim and Foxy Brown (see her Lollipop remix), most would agree that her lyrical content more definably focuses on her skill as a rapper. While she doesn't shy away from being an object of desire, sex is not the entire gimmick. And when she is talking about sex, she presents herself as fully in charge of her sexuality, if not entirely dismissive of male sexual expectations. At once perfectly happy to mobilize typically male fantasies of schoolgirls and menage-a-trois while bragging about "bagging hot women on Usher's behalf":http://bossip.com/229539/new-video-usher-and-nicki-minaj-turning-chicks-into-little-freaks/, she's as frank about "being bisexual":http://www.thegrio.com/specials/hip-hop-politics-from-the-beat-to-the-ballot/is-homosexuality-in-hip-hop-trapped-in-the-closet.php as she is that sex happens on her terms or not at all. Despite the somewhat distracting existence of her wacky and complex personas, Minaj is billed above all else as the prototypical female hip-hop presence. Tellingly, she refers to herself as "Barbie" on numerous occasions in her rhymes, playing up her plastic, doll-like characteristics. As Alyssa Rosenberg "points out on her blog":http://alyssarosenberg.blogspot.com/2010/11/grotesques.html, her album cover shows a slightly nuanced take on the plastic doll we imagine when we think of Barbie: "her legs are sexy but too long for her body, her breasts grotesquely pushed up near her face, her lips in an exaggerated, filler-style duck's pout, her eyes vacant." She's simultaneously embodying the physicality that's come to be expected of high-powered female celebrities, while acknowledging the impossibility of ever fully attaining the perfection required. It's almost as if she's using the cover as a means to broadcast to the world, "I'm fulfilling the standard of beauty as well as I possibly can, see? I've reached it and then some. I get it and I am it" But in addition to embodying the physical female prototype, she's also presented as a prototypical female hip hop celebrity, someone whose street credibility was such that she was able to navigate her career path from Queens to MySpace to becoming part of the Young Money crew, one of the most popular and respected rap crews in the game. It's clear that something about this version of Nicki Minaj as a mainstream female hip-hop figure is working for us. This complex and somewhat convoluted image has found acceptance among both male and female hip-hop fans. Black men I talked to begrudgingly giving props to her flow and swagger before referencing her sex appeal (Minaj seems to bring out the lewd in them, I must say). Many black women, too, admitted to being fans, if not somewhat sheepishly so. One powerful sister who identifies as feminist and works in education admitted to me that the absence of mainstream female rappers for so many years has left her "desperate" for Minaj's female voice -- "any female voice besides a lusty vixen asking some man to be her 'daddy' in a hook."