A Year of Lil Wayne: That Time Nicki Minaj Rapped Circles Around Everyone on "Tapout"

Day 169: "Tapout" feat. Future, Mack Maine, Nicki Minaj, Birdman, and Lil Wayne – Rich Gang, Rich Gang , 2013

Today is International Women's Day, which, despite the many arguments that have been made about Lil Wayne's feminist credentials via the lane of sex positivity, is ultimately not a very productive prompt for discussing Lil Wayne. But while there may not be a ton of Wayne verses that address the topic of women without also addressing the topic of how Wayne wants to fuck those women, Wayne has demonstrably aided culture through a female lens in one indisputable way: using his fame to help launch the career of Nicki Minaj.

We've discussed this here before, so there's no need to belabor his cosign, but the fact of the matter is that circa 2013 Nicki Minaj had very credibly taken Wayne's spot as the Best Rapper Alive (her only notable competitor, I'd say, was Kendrick Lamar). And one place that demonstrated that claim was her verse on "Tapout," a bizarre Frankenstein posse cut under Birdman's Rich Gang banner that brought together Future, Wayne, Nicki, Birdman, and Detail over production from 808Mafia.

Paris Hilton, who shortly thereafter announced she was a Cash Money signee, stars in the video. The song came at Future's hook-writing pop crossover peak, right around the time of "U.O.E.N.O.," "Bugatti," and "Loveeeeee Song." It kicks off with Wayne, still ostensibly the biggest star on the roster (speaking of Wayne's sex-positive bona fides, he does advocate for simultaneous sexual climaxes). But it's Nicki who runs away with the song, no question, flipping the other artists' lyrics about "million dollar pussy" into her own version of the phrase, a celebration of herself.

Nicki's verse has a bunch of good lines, but the first thing that stands out is how formally interesting it is. She cuts it off almost immediately to sing—legitimately croon, which is funny given the subject matter—about who's "got the baddest / pussy on the planet." She raps in a kind of laconic staccato, using the way she emphasizes the one-syllable punches (tap outs??) as a way of making them rhyme. And she ends it with a spoken version of a written trope—which, wait for it, mimics the way people talk on Twitter in a "hashtag" style bar, thus offering a metacommentary on Young Money's much-derided hashtag rap styling. Yo. That shit is crazy! Plus, look how good the last four lines are just straight up: "Pull up in that you-can't-afford this / only rap bitch on the Forbes list / pussy, jewelry, make 'em say "brrr," man / *rubs hands like Birdman.*" Beautiful. For this song—and this post, at least—it's enough to make you forget all about Wayne.

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