LLC - NICKI MINAJ (1st verse)

“I feel like I’m King Kong, name still going ding-dong”

Nicki raps a similar line on her 2018 single “Chun-Li”. King Kong refers to the iconic 1933 film about a giant gorilla of the same name. King Kong is a metaphor: she’s a beast when it comes to rapping.

Her name goes ding-dong because it “rings bells”–everybody recognizes the Nicki Minaj brand. Nicki has a long history of using bell imagery to highlight her relevance in the culture like this line from Chun-Li: Chinese ink on, Siamese links on Call me 2 Chainz, name go ding-dong

“It’s two girls getting more money, and they don’t rap, they sing songs”

Nicki is referring to Beyoncé and Rihanna. As the three leading ladies in the R&B and Hip-Hop genres; Bey, RiRi, and Nicki have been deemed by stan twitter and fans as the “Holy Trinity”.

Nicki acknowledged the “Trinity” in a 2014 interview with Ebro when asked about a possible collaboration.

Regardless, what Nicki tries to convey here is that no other female artist can beat her at her own game nor can any of her contemporaries amass her stats.

“I stay with that pink on. Pink furs and them pink thongs”

Pink is Nicki’s signature color. The color is also present in her previous albums' titles and themes: Pink Friday (2010), Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded (2012) and The Pinkprint (2014).

“Pink thongs” could be a reference to her iconic hit Anaconda, where she appears wearing a pink thong on the single cover of the song as well as in the music video.

“Goons out if they blink wrong, think hard, but don't think long”

Nicki insinuates that her goons will pop up at the slightest sign of danger or ill intentions. She advises her opps to think hard about what they’ll do next but not for too long as it can be all over in an instant

“Pink Friday had Eminem, spit hard but I'm feminine. Iconic trio on Monster, Goblins and Gremlins. What’s left that I didn’t do?”

Nicki digs into her extensive resume of accomplishments and accolades here:

It’s been almost a decade since Nicki’s debut album Pink Friday dropped in 2010. From the very beginning, she came out with impressive collaborations like Eminem on “Roman’s Revenge” and that unforgettable “50k for a verse no album out” feature on Kanye’s “Monster”. Ask the KINGS

Since then, Nicki has gone pop and back, been cosigned by her favorite rappers, stood side by side with the Queen B and taken several musical risks that have paid off. What else is there left to do?

“Took a little break but I’m back to me”

Nicki references her little ‘hiatus’ back in December 2017 when she disappeared from social media for four months, but resurfaced in April 2018 with the release of the singles “Chun Li” and “Barbie Tingz”.

“Tryna make a new Nicki, where the factory? They'll never toe to toe on a track with me. There'll never be another one after me ‘cause the skill level still just a half of me. Blasphemy, my niggas will blast for me. All these low IQ hoes baffle me”

Well damn, Nic.

Atlantic Records offered up-and-coming female rappers (including Lady Leshurr, ​CupcakKe, and possibly Cardi B) up to $250k to act as ‘rivals’ to Nicki. But you can’t mass produce the Nicki brand. Only Nicki has the design and “Pinkprint” to such carefully curated architecture

Of these potential new Nickis, only Cardi has tried going toe-to-toe with the Queen on a track, “MotorSport”, and the resulting track left Nicki light years ahead of all other rappers on the track. Despite the opposition, Nicki has remained the most awarded female rapper ever.

The first line of this is reminiscent of the second verse on “Ganja Burn,” where Nicki describes how hard it is to emulate musicians like herself, The Notorious B.I.G., Jay-Z etc.

“You can’t wear a Nicki wig and then be Nicki, that’s like a fat nigga thinking he can be Biggie”

“Tell em that I wash bitches, take a bath for me”

When someone’s “washed up,” they’ve reached their peak. Nicki has used similar wordplay on other occasions—“Womp Womp”:

“I mean really, you know, these bitches so washed up
I’m walking around with them dryer sheets”

“A bunch of trophies in my crib like an athlete”

Nicki Minaj has amassed a total of 171 awards throughout her career from awards shows like the AMA’s, BET, VMA’s, BBMA’s, Teen Choice Awards etc. Here, she is boasting having her awards in her house similar to a sports athlete.

“You know Nicki gon, eat, Bon Appétit”

“Bon Appétit” is French for “enjoy your meal.” This is also a reference to Katy Perry’s song who she name drops later in the song. Nicki was also featured on Katy’s “Swish Swish”, a song from the same album Bon Appétit appeared on.

“Used to get real hype off a half a mil’, used to get real high off a half a pill”

Nicki has always been candid about her preference for pills (particularly Percocet) in her lyrics. On “Anaconda” she raps:

“I’m high as hell, I only took a half a pill”

This can be interpreted as Nicki no longer pops pills or it takes more to get her high. Hopefully it’s the former. Now that Nicki is making way more money than she used to, half a million dollars just doesn’t excite her as much as it did when she started out.

“We don’t pay niggas to front like the like my shit, we don’t pay niggas to come in and write my shit”

Nicki calls out the fakes in the music industry. She doesn’t pay blogs and the media to show her or her music love, a topic Drake touched on in his 2016 song “Fake Love.”

“We don’t pay niggas to come in and write my shit” is perhaps a reference to Remy Ma—on “No Frauds,” Nicki brought up how Remy had a ghostwriter for her diss track “ShETHER” because she couldn’t remember the lyrics during a live performance as well as her next diss being subpar.

It also may refer to Cardi B, who’s become a topic of controversy after Pardison Fontaine was exposed as one of her ghostwriters. It was later revealed he was credited as a writer of the song under the alias Jordan Thorpe. A legal matter with KSR further proved the allegations.

End of thread. Verse two coming later today! Thank you guys for all the support so far!!!!