You 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.
If 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.
On 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.
The 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.
By 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.
