The softer side of a stylish assassin

Minaj performed that song last week at the Chicago Theater,capping off an outrageously joyful 90-minute performance. It has become a signature song,a surprise for an artist who first made a name with short,dangerous guest verses on other people’s songs. As a young rapper,Minaj was an assassin. As a star herself,she has become emotionally and tonally varied,sometimes an outright softy.

Unlike almost any other rapper,she manages to exist on pop radio and hip-hop radio simultaneously (generally with different songs),and she’s equally comfortable in both spaces. In the last couple of years,Minaj has filled a vast gap that had been there for some time,becoming a pop star who just happens to be someone who primarily raps. She inspires fervour. Even when she was on a slow simmer on Monday,her crowd was manic,vibrating,loose. At one point Minaj,who keeps up a frisky banter with her fans on Twitter,invited some fans on stage and embraced them. “She got the nerve to be like,‘Can you spray me with the perfume?’” Minaj said,with an incredulous laugh. “Like I got the perfume on me!” (Her fragrance brand will be released in the fall.)

Branding is an essential part of her arsenal,from her signature wigs,her unexpected and sometimes ludicrous fashion choices,to her endorsements. She is surface,and surface is her. But that surface obscures her innards to a degree matched in pop music only by Lady Gaga. That’s a shame,because Minaj’s inner life,at least as expressed through her songs,is intense.

She writes convincingly about love and,less often,about her sometimes tough upbringing. Still it’s her flagrant embrace of style that’s made her something of a hero. Where hip-hop has been,so goes Nicki Minaj. And where Nicki Minaj goes,so might hip-hop.