A woman with an album called Queen isn’t very likely to disappoint on delivering a regal output. And yet, Beam Me Up Scotty came out long before Nicki Minaj’s fourth record from 2018. While she may have been on her hiatus tip between getting married to a rapist and having his child, the reissue of this 2009 mixtape seems a pointed move on Minaj’s part to remind us all of who is who. And who Nicki be is someone that can make Crocs go viral, for fuck’s sake. As well as someone who wants to remind us, like Jhené Aiko with her own recent reissue of Sailing Soul(s), how she came to be the present-day icon she is. Even if her cachet dissipated when she went for Kenneth Petty (in all likelihood, his last name at least partially contributing to her desire for marriage), Minaj is here, once more, to focus our attention on the music rather than her image. One that, let’s be honest, Cardi B thought she might be done contending with, having all but assumed the “rap/hip hop throne” for herself these past couple of years.
As of now, there will always be those in the strictly “Team Cardi” camp, while others like to play both sides when it suits them, i.e. Miley Cyrus when she sang, “I love you Nicki, but I listen to Cardi.” This being said in the most white girl manner possible—in case “I’ma keep workin’ from dawn to dusk/So I can keep buyin’ cars off Elon Musk” didn’t already give off that impression in the same song. And, speaking of Musk, it appears that, like Britney Spears, Minaj was already long ago aware how important a role outer space was going to play once more (you know, post-1969) in our environmentally doomed future. Thus, a cover and title like this one. Among other revamps of the 2021 edition of Beam Me Up Scotty is the artwork, which tones down the bright red of her Wonder Woman costume in favor of a darker shade of rouge, adds in two spaceships instead of one and generally tries to detract from the overall 00s aesthetic of the ’09 version.
Wanting us to see her musical evolution from the outset, Minaj kicks off the mixtape with three new tracks, the first being “Seeing Green” featuring Drake and Lil Wayne. Here she cites her triumphant return as though it was always a given, noting of other female rappers (ahem, Cardi), “I am the standout, you just my stand-in/These bitches copy my homework, that’s what they hand in.” Poetically, like Nicki before her when naming Lil’ Kim as an influence, things went south quickly on that front… as they did with Cardi admitting to Nicki being an inspiration—before she became her number one enemy. Cut to the 2018 Met Gala with Cardi’s enormous forehead welt as delivered by Minaj’s friend and, apparently, moonlighting bodyguard Rah Ali (at that time, “besties” with Nicki). The metaphor of Minaj “winning” (“It’s me! I win! You lose”) has become literal again with Beam Me Up Scotty’s facelift.
At the same time, while Nicki continues to insist, “These bitches still my sons, who could ever deny it?” (a line she first penned on “Did It On ‘Em”), she also claims her beef is with no other female rapper in particular as, “No one bitch could be my opp, that shit offends me/It’s corporate giants and machines that went against me.” Nonetheless, we know she would be fine with someone in her entourage hitting Cardi again, should the occasion arise. Maybe at this year’s Met Gala honoring American “fashion”?
Another single and new release to bolster the original material following “Seeing Green” is “Fractions.” Nicki’s usual “mouthing off” manner (in the intonation style of “Chun-Li”) takes center stage here as she reminds, “I put these bitches on game, they should be kissin’ my feet/I tried to give ‘em some press, they tried to say it was beef.” Oui, more Cardi shade. Making an elementary school-level math analogy throughout, the chorus speaks to Minaj lining her adversaries up like fractions a.k.a. putting them in their place. And by the way, Mrs. Petty says, “I graded your homework, bitch, it’s incomplete.” Probably truer than ever from a literal, distance learning perspective.
Next is “Crocodile Teeth (Remix),” another song added where others were detracted (notably, “Mind On My Money” featuring Rihanna, Brinx and Busta Rhymes, “Handstand” featuring Shanell, “Five-O” featuring Jae Millz and Gudda Gudda and “I Feel Free [Remix]” featuring Ron Browz, Red Café and Ricky Blaze). Possessing a similar sonic landscape to “Ganja Burn” from Queen, the chilled-out sound provided by the vocal stylings Skillibeng is contrasted by “Chi-Raq” featuring G Herbo. Another “replacement” track that helps enhance the mixtape for a more “modern” feel, Nicki presents a germinal instrumentation and sound we would later recognize on “Feelin’ Myself.” But here, she steps into streets of Chicago (despite being from Queens—yet Nicki has never been one of those “fiercely proud” New York rappers who won’t ally herself with other cities, which is perhaps why she has more international clout than others in her genre). Rapping, “These niggas that I roll with/Don’t let a single thing get by ’em/King pins and them drug lords Chi-Town, no gun laws/Broke bitches that talk shit?/Now them the bitches I stunt for.” Then again, she stunts for the rich bitches, too.
This much is made clear on “Boss Ass Bitch (Remix),” another track that allows Nicki to brag about her wealth (even when she wasn’t yet “on the level” she is today) and the fact that everyone is constantly copping her swag. One thing that does come up from the past that doesn’t quite “gel” in the present is a lyrical allusion to Nicki’s former claim of going both ways. In the remix she jumped on for Doja Cat’s “Say So,” Minaj drew controversy for rapping, “Used to be bi, but now I’m just hetero.” At the time of “Boss Ass Bitch,” she was evidently still going through her bi “phases,” as she spits, “P-p-p-pussy like girls, damn, is my pussy gay?/It’s a holiday/Play-With-My-Pussy Day Pussy this, pussy that, pussy taken.” Yes, it certainly is now that she’s wifey to a “super straight” man.
“Intro” gives us a snapshot of Nicki at twenty-seven, channeling part Mariah, part Gaga (who was already getting famous herself in ’09) as she exudes pure ambition—the very sort essential to gaining worldwide fame (as Madonna will attest)—insisting, “And I know that no matter what, in the end, it’s not going to be about my talent, you know? It’s not going to be about connections. It’s not gonna be about my looks. It’s gonna be about who wants it the most. And I want it the most.” Not many people—especially not many women in the rap game—can make that pronouncement, which is precisely why Minaj is still standing pretty much all alone in her own category.
The standouts from the mixtape everyone will remember are “Itty Bitty Piggy” and “Best I Ever Had (Remix).” It is the former that follows “Intro” with its bouncing rhythm and Nicki’s trademark cheekiness, manifested in the form of her goading, “Now, if you see a itty bitty piggy in the market/Give that bitch a quarter and a car, tell her, ‘Park it’/I don’t fuck with pigs, like ‘as-salamu alaykum’/I put ’em in a field, I let Oscar Mayer bake ’em.” As usual, her braggadocio extends to iterating how much more superior she is (this surely must be a symptom of being from New York) to all the rap bitches around her trying to become successful. And, of course, she also takes advantage of a double entendre dig at the police, as anyone would.
This transitions into the appropriately titled “I Get Crazy” featuring Lil Wayne. With a raucous opening that reminds one of a similar sonic style to Faith Evans’ 1999 single, “All Night Long,” the beat defies anyone to ignore it. Elsewhere, the “I get crazy” portion is sampled from DJ Webstar’s “5000.” Interpolations of Naughty By Nature’s “Hip Hop Hooray” are also added to show respect for rap’s past, ostensibly. Or many rappers just hope no one of the present will be able to detect there’s a sample involved. It is once again on this track that Nicki name-checks her seemingly favorite alter ego of the time: Nicki Lewinsky. For those confused about why Minaj might bow down to Monica, the former explained, “People are gonna hear that name and be like ‘Oh my God, this bitch is a bird,’ but check this out; this bitch got in the same room with the President of the United States of America. People don’t look at that on the large scale and just see that she was giving him head. I knew it was gonna get attention and people would have to something to say but you gotta understand… I’m with the president of Young Money, the hottest rapper in the world right now. Monica was able to get at the biggest person in the world and she had him to herself. She could’ve used that to her advantage but she didn’t and that’s a sad story. Nicki Lewinsky is a different story.” Uh, so yes. It’s sort of nice—a bit demeaning and chauvinistic toward women, but nice.
The initial traces of her Cockney accent (the one meant to demarcate we’re hearing “Roman” speak) appear on “Kill Da DJ.” This is also one of the first instances of Nicki giving us her singing voice on the mixtape (the kind that we would hear on the likes of “Save Me” and “Right Thru Me”) as she asserts, “You got me wrong/You be sittin’ by the bar when it’s your song/You can act like you don’t like it but you do.” Other evocations of a simpler time include Nicki mentioning Paris Hilton and Lindsay Lohan… because again, this was the 00s.
“Nicki Minaj Speaks” is designed as an interlude solely to lead into the fact that Gucci Mane is one the next track. And yes, even before Britney Spears, Nicki had a song called “Slumber Party”—wherein Gucci dominates the majority of it. Just as he does on “Shopaholic.” Sure, it’s a mixtape, which infers the presence of other rappers—but Gucci really kills the flow and vibe that Nicki had going strong before these two songs appeared.
At least Lil Wayne has the decency to let Minaj take center stage on “Gotta Go Hard” (changed from just “Go Hard” on the original Beam Me Up Scotty). The beginnings of how Minaj clawed her way to fame are again present in the announcement, “I truly believe that my haters are my motivators.” And that’s remained the case as time wears on—perhaps even more than ever as she battles for her crown after a small blip of a “break.” After all, “If you was as real as me/You would never let another girl sit in your throne/I done put the chokehold/Now they screamin’, ‘Nicki leave me alone!’”
On Nicki Minaj Speaks #2, it’s evident that the time period of the mixtape still more freely allowed for appropriative tendencies with Asian culture—the very same Minaj eventually got called out for with “Chun Li.” But then, Cardi was apparently coming up during a time when it was okay to call other black women cockroaches, so who are we to judge Nicki? In any event, Minaj declares she has the right to be “soft,” too. And that she can sing just as well as she can rap. So it is that a tonal shift in the mixtape occurs as we segue into “Best I Ever Had (Remix)” featuring Drake. This would mark one of many collaborations that proved the sweet harmony between the Young Money duo (later established again on the likes of “Moment 4 Life,” “Only” and “No Frauds”).
One of the most sonically divergent songs on Beam Me Up Scotty is “Keys Under Palm Trees.” Filled with a kind of forlornness and regret not present on other tracks, Minaj gleefully addresses her coke habit (if you couldn’t guess that’s what was going to happen with a title like this) with the line, “And I am ’bout that coke, not what’cha put the rum in.”
She also has to “go there” with Asian fetishization again (we get it girl, you’re like one-sixteenth Chinese) with, “Anyway, I’m the ninja, Kawasaki blazin’/In a kimono, ‘Konichiwa’ to the Asians/I kick, kick, kick it like I’m Bruce Lee’s son.”
“Silly” (changed from “Get Silly” on the original) comes in heavy on the instrumentation, with Minaj finding some time to squeeze in the verse, “Tell them this is church, and tell them I am the deacon/Tell them that I’m Black, Chinese, and Butter Pecan.” Will do…
The more aggressively-toned “Easy” featuring Gucci Mane and Rocko is less song/rap and more a bid to see who can outdo the other on being the most annoying, though there is perhaps no more irksome line than: “All my Harajuku Barbies I see you.”
The final interlude, “Nicki Minaj Speaks #3,” is said in Minaj’s “Roman” a.k.a. Cockney accent as she gives shout outs to those who have helped her along the way, not yet knowing she would shed so many different iterations of “the help” as her star continued to rise after ’09.
Dancing in circles around everyone else with her ability to rapidly rhyme (a.k.a. rap), “Envy” finds Nicki tsk’ing, “Envy, all they do is envy/Don’t they know what’s in me?/Don’t they know I’m coming back, swinging for that/Envy, why would they offend me?/Why they go against me?” The same still applies in the present, even if what Nicki has come back with is more of the same material, repurposed (another case in point, she’ll be releasing a six-part docuseries about her life and the making of Queen on HBO Max). This isn’t to say a fifth album of fresh material won’t be out soon enough. But maybe all she can give right now in order to go forward is a reexamination of her past.
This much seems to be true on “Can Anybody Hear Me?” as well. For it is here she announces what has turned out to be her career-long—nay, lifelong—purpose. Which is: “I came to save a thing called female rap.” So she has, and largely because of her unique style that blends both singing and rapping, an “anomaly” noted via the lyrics, “Def Jam said I’m no Lauryn Hill/Can’t rap and sing on the same CD/The public won’t get it, they got ADD.” Even if they do, it seems like they still “get it.” “It” being, of course, Nicki.
Before a future Nicki collaborator named Madonna released “I Rise,” Minaj released “Still I Rise.” Once more calling out her haters, Minaj speaks from their perspective as she raps, “I think she fuckin’ Wayne/She call herself Lewinsky, that means she give him brain/She tryna be like Lil’ Kim; her picture looks the same/Why she ain’t signed with G-Unit, she from Queens, right?” She also taps into the psychology of those who spend so much time and energy on someone they hate. For if they really didn’t care about them in a passionate way, the result would be indifference rather than trollish online comments. As an homage to Maya Angelou’s “And Still I Rise,” Minaj concludes that it’s better to simply rise above all the hate by continuing on your way and doing what you’re doing. Thus, she presciently vows, “Keep my eyes on the prize, see my haters, tell ’em hi (I’ma keep my eyes on the price, oh, oh)/One day you’ll remember this, one day when we reminisce/Nothing I do ever is good enough for the music biz/Still I rise, still I fight, still I might crack a smile.” Indeed, she has. All the way to the bank.
The mixtape’s eponymous dénouement, “Beam Me Up Scotty,” is an up-tempo dance floor banger. Even if some of its 00s references don’t hold up so well, namely, “I just found out that I was doper than Amy Winehouse, maybe.” In other areas, however, Minaj proves one sentiment has remained timeless throughout her career: “I just heard that I was the baddest in the town/So I came down and had to pick up my crown.”
And so, speaking of those who would try to snatch the crown, after the Met Gala drama that ensued in ‘18, one of the comments made by Cardi on her Instagram was, “What you need to do is stop focusing on other people, focus on yourself and focus on your craft, because you’re out here fucking up your legacy looking like a fucking hater.” Well, dear Cardi, it would seem that all the baddest bitches can’t help but be fueled by hate—it’s sort of like a motivating lifeblood. And it would also seem that Minaj’s legacy is only about to strengthen after this year.
Maybe that’s why Cardi was subsequently quoted in 2020 as saying, even if a bit grudgingly, “There was one female rapper that dominated for a very long time. And she did pretty good. She’s been still dominating.” So yes, even Cardi herself—the supposed new “Queen” of Rap—must also still bow down.
