Next week sees a glut of late-year album releases hitting stores, including Kanye’s latest masterpiece, Ne-Yo’s Libra Scale, My Chemical Romance’s Danger Days, Ke$ha’s Cannibal, and Nicki Minaj’s Pink Friday. Most of those artists have been plowing through the late night talk show circuit in the past week to wring a few more sales out of punters, and it was Minaj’s turn last night (Nov. 18) with this ultra smooth performance of “Right Thru Me” on David Letterman’s show. As Prefix’s Andrew Winistorfer pointed out, this veers close to the kind of saccharine R&B Alicia Keys pumps out on a regular basis, which might not appease her hip-hop fanbase, but is likely to make her more of a mainstream proposition. It’s too bad no one in Minaj’s marketing team thought of releasing Pink Friday on Black Friday—an opportunity missed.
For the pop stuff, she just really needs to go all out, like enlisting Dr. Luke & Max Martin or Bloodshy & Avant. She has the potential to do interesting stuff on her own, but I could find better pop music out there right now. Her guest appearances are still hot though.