Should ‘Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded’ Have Been A Double-Disc?

Published: Thursday 5th Apr 2012 by Sam

You’ve read our review, so you’ll know that – unlike some sects – we actually enjoyed Nicki Minaj‘s sophomore offering ‘Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded’. 

However, a sentiment we expressed has become one echoed in other critiques of the good, bad, and in-between persuasions:

The album is disjointed.

For all Ms. Minaj’s gusto and defiance, it’s abundantly clear that there was a real struggle to please both her Pop and Hip-Hop audiences. And while it’s a relatively “good” problem to have, it’s a problem which we feel could have been easily avoided with a more tactile approach.

Indeed, instead of a tracklist which divides the album like Moses did the Red Sea, surely it would have benefitted all to go the extra mile and conjure up a “themed” double-disc of sorts?

With the industry not making it rain like it used to, one could argue the “physical double-disc” may be a stretch. However, when an act drops a 19-track album, backed by an International media-blitz, it’s clear “coin” isn’t an issue.

Hence,  something akin to Beyonce‘s ‘I Am…Sasha Fierce’ project is ultimately what her Sophomore Dr should have ordered. A simple setup which would create ample space for Nicki to appease her “mixtape” and “Mindy” fans. Heck, even if not a double disc, then even an interlude would suffice in adequately teasing apart “Nicki” and “Roman”.

Still, with the LP on course to hit #1, what’s done is done. That said, we can only hope such suggestion serves as food for thought heading into her third studio outing.

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  1. Kevin April 5, 2012

    I actually agree with you guys for once.

  2. kieron April 5, 2012

    the album feels like garbage because the 2nd half is so awful…the first 5 or 6 tracks are the only thing i’ll be listening to in a month.

    a double disc would not have changed this so what would the point of it really be?

  3. kimberly April 5, 2012

    I listened to that crap and it should get NO DISC

  4. YOOSONDALOOSE April 5, 2012

    Yeah, a double disc would have been better IMO, but the album still works so well.

  5. Nahjee April 5, 2012

    DAMN TGJ LOVE NICKI MINAJ THEY ALWAYS GOT HER NAME IN THERE MOUTH! IT DOESNT REALLY MATTER IF IT WAS A TWO DISS OR NOT. CUS YOU STILL WOULD HAVE GOT THE HIP HOP/POP AND HATERS HATING LIKE THEY DOING NOW. ANYWAY YOU CAN TELL NICKI WINNING CUS EVERYBODY IS TAKLING BOUT NUCKI HAHAHA GO ON EVERY BLOG SITE YOU SEE NICKI HAHAHA IT FEELS GREAT!

  6. KAT DELUNA FAN April 5, 2012

    She already copied bey for the alter ego s***,she shouldnt for a double disc.
    I think after the Stupid H**,she should have give her urban tracks more attention real quick(promo,video..) cause for the last months,The only Nicki we heard on the radios was the popnika:

    -Give me all
    -Turn me on
    -Starships

    So the urban audience probably thought this was the album direction. 😕

    You live and you learn

  7. Ugh April 5, 2012

    Yes!!! first time i heard it had 22 songs i immediately thought it was a double disc. I was thinking she’s gonna do something like Sasha Fierce. Half rap and the other half pop or whatever but oh well.

  8. Mike April 5, 2012

    I’m not a nicki fan I’m a nicki supporter.. Nicki is swimming in the money yea maybe
    Nicki does have to many pop songs on the radio and not enough rap songs.

    But pop is where it’s at far as billboards goes and selling a decent amount of records
    And just staying RELEVANT. That’s how I see it

    Like I think iggy Alzealia & azealia banks won’t get very far just doing
    Hip hop s*** you feel me your not gonna stay RELEVANT that long if you
    Just do one thing. You gotta spread out a little

  9. JA April 5, 2012

    I guess Beyonce was the only artist to make a Double Disc… ever…

  10. Drew187 April 5, 2012

    She got 4 hot songs on here and the rest us wack nothing but noise makes your ears bleed

  11. Os April 5, 2012

    it don’t matter to me,either way is cool to me,i see you is going ofter everyone because of what happen to KAT DELUNA it,s not nicki minaj fault you now,you are obviously your and ignorant, nicki didn’t copy anything from beyonce,i see you a beyonce fan now,jumping on her d*** now,just like the bandwagonist you are,i bet if she did the double disc,you are would run on here and said she copy so and so.

  12. Darianna Jones April 5, 2012

    The first half of the album is wonderful, but then it switches over into this strange, Top 40 material that I’m not too fond of save for “Right by My Side”. Compared to the first Pink Friday, where the pop material was mixed in with the Hip Hop material, there’s too much going on.

  13. BEDSTUYFLY April 5, 2012

    Oh SAMANTHA…. Of course you love this album, it’s fake just like you! 🙂

  14. Truth April 5, 2012

    It’s diverse not disjointed. Nicki’s fans aren’t just black people. She made an album that every race can listen to and find something interesting. Not all white people listen to Rap. That’s why she added pop songs to make it diverse. Thank Taylor Swift for that

  15. antertain April 5, 2012

    Maybe double disc would be better but at the end of the day its the same body of work regardless

    Next album title: Pink Friday Pop vs Hip-Hop

  16. Hola April 5, 2012

    It shouldn’t have been released in any form..its complete garbage! The only decent song is HOV Lane….I have tried to get into it and I just can’t. Its such a disappointment. I will be re-selling mine on amazon lol

  17. Kayla April 5, 2012

    But would difference would it make if the genres were seperated?? you would still get pop and hip-hop, you would still get haterz hating on her, calling her a “sellout” and the album would still be KILLER!!! it’s not hard to disect the music if you have common sense;
    Roman Holiday-S** in the Lounge + Stupid H** = Hip-Hop
    Starships-Beautiful Sinner = Dance Pop
    Marilyn Monre-Gunshot = Girly / I Hate Boys Music
    Either way i would of still got my standard and deluxe copies but I’m just saying it won’t make a difference!! It’ll still be the same CD with the same mood with the same songs!! Like Beyonce’s “Sasha Fierce”..double disk, one disk up tempo songs, second disc ballads..if they were combined, you would still get one half up-tempo, one half ballad. I honestly think that double-disc are just annoying unless you have a DVD or something in addition..Like, i get annoyed when i got to take out a CD and insert the next in order to hear a song instead of clicking the > button…

    But overall this album will do good, i promise you…you guys suuure do have a lot of judgement after exactly one day of release..like damn, some people probally ain’t got they checks yet!! LOL!! and like i said on the last post, her fans are so down to heart they dont buy one, they buy 2,3,4 copies..some even 11-20..IDK why, maybe for gifts, or in case one get damaged, or some just like being Nicki greedy!! But it don’t matter, as long as they support they fav..and her fans ain’t the only ones…Chris Brown, Lady Gaga, Britney Spears and more artists fans buy more than one copies for their own reasons….

    Anyways, I Love Nicki Minaj, she added a new twist to Hip-Hop, if you hate her or love her she always keeps you un suspense and that’s that!!
    #PinkFriday:RomanReloaded

  18. Kayla April 5, 2012

    @KATDELUNAFAN…..oh soo Beyonce was the only person to ever invent an alter-ego?? *Slowly turns and walks away*

  19. prettigurlrockD April 5, 2012

    I think if you don’t like something you can just skip over it. Besides Nicki obviously has the HIP-HOP songs FIRST on the album because she knows her roots. Then the pop stuff later. So yeah. Only criticsm I have with this album is that the pop songs shouldn’t have been so GENERIC sounding like rihanna, gaga, britney, etc….I honestly don’t see the katy perry comparisons. Katy has a different sound. I’ve never heard katy delve in too much techno. That’s not her lane. She just does cheesy radio friendly pop music. Katy perry isn’t too bad either. But I wouldn’t pay to see her live nor rihanna. But THAT’S a different story.

    Moving on, she shoulda just experimented pop sounds into her rap/hip-hop music and then it would have been a better album. But the album isn’t that bad. Some ppl just like to overexaggerate cuz they don’t like her.

  20. prettigurlrockD April 5, 2012

    Hmm, I see Sam is starting to jump off the minaj bandwagon. What happened, Sam? You were going hard for nicki writing biased articles until those sales predictions came in. You’re such a QUEEN it’s ridiculous. They way you trash rihanna but Nicki Minaj can’t sing either! But at least her raping is decent! That’s the only thing I’m here for. Anyway who says HOV lane isn’t good is a hater. That track is one of the best on the album.

  21. Onyx April 5, 2012

    She would debut at #1 no matter what, my fav. songs are “Young Forever” and “Marilyn Monroe”, stop hating on her, the girl is doing her thing, everybody loves her but as usually this site only have eyes for Beyonce and that girl what was her name oh yeah! Rita WHO?.

  22. commanderofthedancefloor April 5, 2012

    im still dissapointed with the album! mainly because the rap songs were just thrown on their! the only good ones are Hov lane and i am your leader! the rest of the rap songs sounded like she did them just to say half the album is hip hop! the pop songs got all the attention, it would of been nice to hear some more quality hip hop stuff from nicki and with better lyrics like how she does when she features! she kills it on everybody elses songs i want her to do that for her own songs!
    the pop songs are growing on me but i would rather have all hip hop with a few pop songs! keep va va voom, starships, marylin monroe & whip it and fill the rest with hip hop and i would be happy! thats just for me though!

  23. QueenSize April 5, 2012

    The moment I listened to the snippets it was clearly unbalanced. Too damn much. She should of cut both genres. I don’t know the names of her pop tracks but they pretty much sounded the same. Nicki should of definitely axed Beez in a trap and s** in a lounge. A couple of interludes were definitely needed once you put the songs on the chopping block and the album would of flowed better. But Nicki has a big ego and no humility or appreciation for those femcees that came before her so f*** her.

  24. Jey April 5, 2012

    It’s f****** blatant. If you can’t OBVIOUSLY tell the first half of the cd is hiphop/rap and the second half is pop then something is obviously wrong with you. It doesn’t need to be double disked because it’s already separated. If she had put “Whip It” first and then “Hov Lane” and then “Fire Burn” in that order, I could understand you. But you’re being a bit redundant when you ask for it to be COMPLETELY separated. It already is? Why go a whole extra mile when the work is already done? It’s like you complain about something that doesn’t even really need to be fixed. How many albums have been put out where the entire cd was a huge mix of slow jams, r&b, pop and dance records? Hell, even rappers do it on their cd’s. At least Nicki had the brains to completely separate the two on the exact same cd.

  25. Jey April 5, 2012

    Adding to that, the double disk thing is annoying anyway. Beyonce doing it made perfect sense to me, but it was too much work on my part. What happens when I’m driving down the road and I want to hear a whole grouping of songs off both albums? What if I only like one song off one album, and then have to switch the cd’s over just to hear the other album? Yeah, I’m being lazy by not just switching the disks, but why should I have to go through that anyway when I brought one album in the first place?

  26. prettigurlrockD April 5, 2012

    Are you forgetting that Bey’s album 4 had COMPLETELY different songs and none of them meshed together?? It was a mess. Then she put run the world as the last track. The album was confusing. When I first heard run the world I was thinking the entire album would be some sort of club/african beat concept. But she gave us 70’s music, 90’s music, r&b ballads, and some other borings songs! Uggh. I just can’t. She shoulda fused run the world with her I am…sasha fierce album and left it OFF the album cuz it did not sounds right on the album. End of time reminded me of her dancing in a safari though with a bunch of hot guys though!

    I’m not making this about beyonce but I’m just giving an example that this post sounds silly for bashing someone else cuz it shoulda has two disks SMH.

  27. Willy April 5, 2012

    I find Nicki’s new album amazing it mixes her music and shows she has multiple talents and she can explore music more. A lot of people love this album but a lot of people hate it to. I think if you’re just listening to it to listen to it you’ll love it but if you listen to it just to critique it then you wont like it so much. Then again just MY opinion !

  28. Chrisp April 5, 2012

    Calm down guys! 2 solve this problem all u hav 2 do is hit the shuffle button on ur iPad or iPhone! The way the tracklist Is set out might not be great but u can’t deny that Minaj is the best artist with freshness in a long time! Just enjoy it!!!

  29. JER April 6, 2012

    No, it should have just been the pop/dance album she wanted to make. The bet songs are the pop songs. The Urban tracks are WHACK. Champion, Come on a Cone, and all that s*** is WHACK AS HELL. She just tried t get some big Urban names to make the songs hott but they’re whack. You can tell she phoned all the rap songs in just to throw them on the record.

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