Nicki Minaj’s “Pink Friday” has been making the rounds with the Bloggerati for a least a week and it hit the internets between one and two days ago. The general consensus is that Nicki Minaj’s “Pink Friday” sucks. The project’s buzz was enormous. Nicki Minaj also broke a Billboard record for having the most songs on the Billboard Hot 100 at the same time. In any other era of music history this accomplishment would actually be impressive but I’ll explain why it really isn’t below.

She’s received co-signs from everyone with a name in the music industry as well as accolades from everyone you could possibly imagine all before her debut album even dropped. She has a documentary set to air on MTV near the end of the month. Now that the culmination of all that hard work and overwhelming industry hype is a piece of flaming hot garbage it’s time to retrace our steps and figure out how the supposed savior of female emcees got to her place as a media darling in the first place.

I’d been hearing Nicki Minaj via her mixtape appearances since about 2006 via AllHipHop.com and Boxden but I never once took her serious because regardless of the pictures I saw of her online as I was never impressed with her bars or her music. Eventually, Nicki Minaj began a relationship with Lil’ Wayne and his Young Money imprint. In August 2009, it was made official and Nicki Minaj signed a deal with Young Money/Universal.

As soon as that signing became official “the push” went into overdrive. With a corporate machine behind her, the co-sign of “the greatest rapper alive” Lil’ Wayne in addition to the recent Young Money acquisition of Drake her signing became more of an event. You also have to take into account that Nicki Minaj was pretty much the lone female emcee in the industry. Due to her business and industry relationships and crew affiliation she was automatically tied to damn near everyone in the industry with a heartbeat.

She was also in that rare space of being one of the few artists in the industry that were legitimately considered “hot” so when people in the industry went looking for features guess where they went first? To put all of Nicki Minaj’s features and guest appearances into perspective when Jay-Z was in the studio with Robin Thicke doing “Meiple”, Robin Thicke mentioned that he had a record that needed something extra and Jay-Z himself suggested Nicki Minaj to him for the song that became “Shake It For Daddy”. Jay fuckin’ Z. The God MC. Former president of Def Jam Records. Let that marinate.

Being that the entire industry is in dire straits and everyone is looking for a hit they are going to reach out for whoever is the hottest at the moment for features. It happened with T-Pain and Akon when they were on everyone’s hooks and it often resulted in them being on 5 or more songs at a time in rotation on the radio.  Also consider the fact that Nicki Minaj is the only female emcee that’s even relevant at the major label level which will get her even more work.

You must also factor in that the radio only plays 20 damn songs in it’s rotation at any given time. This is how Nicki Minaj was able to have so many songs on the Billboard Hot 100 simultaneously. In essence, it’s akin to when in the 90’s all of a sudden multiple players began having 40+ home run seasons simultaneously when before it was considered impressive when a player hit more than 25 in a season. Later on, it was discovered that these players were taking performance enhancing drugs so this whole stretch of broken records was achieved through artificial means.

 Since Nicki was hot and the only game in town in an industry with only 5-8 artists moving units it’s safe to say that the entire Rap game is on steroids. Nicki Minaj’s buzz was tied into so many surrounding factors regarding her being all over the radio, all over the print media and the Rap blogosphere that when the industry co-signs came those of us that listened to female emcees with superior talent on the regular that got no shine saw this push develop it created an inevitable anti Nicki Minaj backlash.

Nicki Minaj raised her profile by taking racy pictures, playing up her possible bisexuality, calling herself a Barbie, rapping in ridiculous accents and changing her delivery as if she was schizophrenic during songs. She also developed this off the wall image that includes ridiculous wigs and over the top costumes. It’s as if being herself and relying strictly on the quality of her bars in the industry isn’t enough. Who are we kidding? It isn’t, otherwise Lady Gaga would just perform under her government name.

In any event, she built up a devoted cult following of “Barbies” that dress up like her and recite her bars (yes, men are included in this army of stans). Nicki Minaj is currently 75% image. Let’s discuss her actual talent for once, shall we? On the mic, Nicki Minaj is mediocre at best. She does have some occasional flashes of brilliance and from time to time she will spit a clever line but these events are few and far between. I don’t care how good you look or how fat your ass is when I’m listening to an artist’s music. I judge strictly on talent. That being the case, Nicki Minaj falls short with me.

I consistently choose talent and substance over image and talentwise Nicki Minaj doesn’t warrant the level of attention or praise she currently receives from critics, industry heads and artists alike. When you have Kanye West saying dangerous things like Nicki Minaj could be one of the greatest artists ever or when people compare Nicki Minaj to Lauryn Hill you need to step back and do knowledge to exactly what’s taking place. MTV is about to air a documentary about Nicki Minaj called “My Time Is Now” on November 28th. The last time MTV did a documentary for an album release was for her labelmate Drake. Coincidence?

Didn’t Steve Rifkind also say on record that Asher Roth’s “Asleep In The Bread Aisle” would be a Hip Hop classic and a game changer last year? Who even remembers that damn album now? When’s the last time anyone even played it? The Rap game is currently in it’s steroids era and the media is BALCO. The media hype machine in tandem with corporate entities push out these mediocre artists to the masses and time and again it blows up in their faces when the final product is mediocre. Mediocre talent produces mediocre music. It’s mathematics, God.

The tired practice of pursuing “hotness” or artificially generating it is beyond tiresome. It’s also transparent when certain entertainers or entities attempt to keep themselves “hot” or maintain their “relevance” by attaching themselves to whomever is hot at the time. I’m speaking of Diddy, of course. Jay Electronica went and signed with Roc Nation instead of with Bad Boy. If Diddy stopped being a Bugatti Boy with Rick Ross and dancing in Nicki’s videos maybe things would’ve gone differently. By the way, Diddy also co-signs Nicki Minaj. He’s also said that Rick Ross is the new Biggie Smalls so his credibility is shot.

So here we are. Nicki Minaj is all over the radio. She’s all over the newsstand. She’s all over the television. Her name is on the lips of everyone with a name worth mentioning. Her album is highly anticipated and expectations are sky high. The album hits music journalists, critics, bloggers and then the fans and it’s met with less than favorable reactions. The general consensus is the album is schizophrenic and sounds like a mediocre collection of radio singles and club songs as opposed to a concise album. Is this really a surprise to anyone?

We are in an era where we value image far more than actual talent and creativity. We are in an era where mediocrity is rewarded and excellence is frowned upon for fear it won’t be understood or it may be to hard to market. We are in an era where record labels, music publications and mass media are desperate for superstars. So much so they’re willing to manufacture them through whatever means they have available to them.

Nicki Minaj is currently killing the game. A game where she has absolutely no competition. A game where everyone is helping her out by feeding her the ball every possession and when she does score they all remark that she’s one of the greatest ever to do it. A game where her jersey is the only one being sold at the arena. A game where the referees have been told to not call her for double dribbling, traveling or offensive fouls or they’ll be considered “haters”. All that notwithstanding, she’s still dominating the game, B.

“Pink Friday” is going to drop soon. It doesn’t even matter if the album is any good, it only matters how many units it moves. This is why I had to push back my other pieces to stay up until 5 AM to bang this particular piece out. In this MTV Top 10 Hottest Rappers list era “hotness” and “relevance” translates to spins and units sold. Image and buzz currently overrules talent and the quality of the actual music. All this current practice is doing is killing the music itself. In turn, it’s also killing the fans. The average modern music fan wouldn’t be able to recognize a truly great artist if their lives depended on it.

Forget that Nicki Minaj is the lone female emcee on the major label market and the industry has tricked some of you into believing she’s going to usher in a new era or resurgence of female emcees. There never stopped being female emcees. There are at least 50 currently active that make Nicki Minaj sound like 50 Tyson in comparison. Don’t fall for the okeydoke. This is all smoke and mirrors. The rap game is on steroids and everyone in the game that gets an overwhelming amount of love that has a larger than life image and not the talent to match needs to have an asterisk next to their names on the charts. Real talk.

One.