![the song pills and potions the song pills and potions](https://urbanislandz.com/wp-content/uploads/2014/06/Nicki-Minaj-The-Game-Pills-Potions1-1200x900.png)
![the song pills and potions the song pills and potions](https://s-i.huffpost.com/gen/1808302/images/o-NICKI-MINAJ-facebook.jpg)
It's kind of similar to Nicki's first breakout single, "Your Love," except it sounds better in every way. Unlike "Starships" or "Pound the Alarm," it's not overwhelmingly maximal (mirroring a similar shift in Nicki's own more natural image recently). Luke and co-written by Esther Dean, who are the types of talents that can make literally anyone a star, and thus mesh particularly well with someone who is already a huge star on her own merits. And the "I still love, I still love, I still love, I still love, I still love" hook has the kind of bombast that makes for those perfect moments at a concert where they shine the lights on the crowd and everyone starts spontaneously crying. "I'm angry but I still love you" is probably the easiest feeling in the world to relate to. It still gets across a message of actual heartbreak. It would work in the grocery store, but it's still cool. "Pills N Potions" feels like a Madonna-scale pop hit, the kind of ubiquitous, schmaltzy thing that will always be on some playlist somewhere for decades. And it's a breakup song that's also about drugs, which are the two most reliable topics to make everyone on the planet-especially teenagers, who make up 90 percent of the music-consuming planet-identify with it. But it is going to be really, really over-exposed because it hits that almost impossibly alchemical balance of pop and rap that Nicki Minaj has promised and that everyone wants from her.
![the song pills and potions the song pills and potions](https://live.staticflickr.com/5574/14262532486_aaac059dfa_b.jpg)
It will probably be the song on the album that, by the time you actually get the album, you skip because it's been over-exposed. "Pills N Potions," the long-promised first single, is not a perfect song. Rather than taking the rap half/pop half model of Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, my guess is it will present Nicki Minaj as a pop star who is above all a rapper, much in the way Tha Carter III did for Lil Wayne (it doesn't hurt that YMCMB has been here before). Her upcoming album, The PinkPrint, is supposedly a return to her hip-hop roots, but it's already being rolled out with the type of prophecy-fulfilling, classic-in-the-making approach that suggests it's going to be way more than just a collection of blistering verses. As much as I love Nicki-as the best, most inventive rapper working right now, as the fantastically over-the-top, frenetically varied pop persona-I will admit that she has achieved this perfect balance, this ideal melding of everything she represents, exactly once, on "Super Bass." Otherwise, she's leaned hard in one direction or the other (to still-amazing results).