After turning up the heat with her "High School" video, Nicki Minaj takes it down a notch, takes us back to the old mixtape days and defends her brand with another moody video for her latest track "Up in Flames," the opener and yet another cut off the endlessly long-slash-promotable "Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded - The Re-Up." And if there's any takeaway here, it's that Minaj is 110 percent serious about being the best rapper in the game, male or female. She already admitted to being the best in a recent interview, but now instead of telling us, she's showing us in her no-frills clip.
Minaj takes her standard boastful tone on the track, which is definitely more "mixtape" Nicki Minaj. As she recently spoke about the track to MTV News, saying, "Like 'Up in Flames,' if a dude was on a that song with me, everyone would've talked about it and they would [argue] 'who had the best verse' but when I put a song out by myself..." she trailed off, before adding that the male-dominated industry has something to do with it. "[It's] because men run the hip-hop game-let's be honest, they're the program directors, they wanna be able to rap stuff and they're not gonna recite a female [verse], they just feel funny and it is what it is."
The 30-year-old YMCMB rapper/American Idol judge made a big shift in tone for this Grizz Lee-directed video compared to some of her past. It's a less-than-subtle product placement shot of the rapper's perfume and cosmetics. The darkly themed clip for "Up In Flames" begins with a motorcycle powering down a road, while we jump cut to a hoodie-clad Minaj spends some serious screen-time mugging seriously in the dark with a companion, as she walking through a dark home with a pout on her face and a black hoodie on her back, before sitting down to play the piano with a bunch of lit candles and rapping in the studio while wearing sunglasses.
While Minaj also makes room for wheelie-poppin' motorcycles as the biker does all kinds of stunts on the pavement, Queen Barbie stunts lyrically in a lavish house. But don't get confused: Minaj's not trying to be fabulous here but she's keeping it minimal by putting her visceral flow on center stage, working in the studio, and writing down rhymes and checking her production. This very slow beat allows for Minaj's Queens accent bite at her competitors in full-throat. Instead, she seems defensive, rather than offensive, and the camera is out fishing for proof of her successes. Overall, this is all flames.
Minaj takes her standard boastful tone on the track, which is definitely more "mixtape" Nicki Minaj. As she recently spoke about the track to MTV News, saying, "Like 'Up in Flames,' if a dude was on a that song with me, everyone would've talked about it and they would [argue] 'who had the best verse' but when I put a song out by myself..." she trailed off, before adding that the male-dominated industry has something to do with it. "[It's] because men run the hip-hop game-let's be honest, they're the program directors, they wanna be able to rap stuff and they're not gonna recite a female [verse], they just feel funny and it is what it is."
The 30-year-old YMCMB rapper/American Idol judge made a big shift in tone for this Grizz Lee-directed video compared to some of her past. It's a less-than-subtle product placement shot of the rapper's perfume and cosmetics. The darkly themed clip for "Up In Flames" begins with a motorcycle powering down a road, while we jump cut to a hoodie-clad Minaj spends some serious screen-time mugging seriously in the dark with a companion, as she walking through a dark home with a pout on her face and a black hoodie on her back, before sitting down to play the piano with a bunch of lit candles and rapping in the studio while wearing sunglasses.
While Minaj also makes room for wheelie-poppin' motorcycles as the biker does all kinds of stunts on the pavement, Queen Barbie stunts lyrically in a lavish house. But don't get confused: Minaj's not trying to be fabulous here but she's keeping it minimal by putting her visceral flow on center stage, working in the studio, and writing down rhymes and checking her production. This very slow beat allows for Minaj's Queens accent bite at her competitors in full-throat. Instead, she seems defensive, rather than offensive, and the camera is out fishing for proof of her successes. Overall, this is all flames.
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