"Massive Attack" is a song by recording artist Nicki Minaj. The song features American singer-songwriter and producer Sean Garret who wrote the song with Minaj and produced the song with Alex Da Kid. It served the first single from Minaj's debut album, Pink Friday, with Billboard later claiming it was dropped from Pink Friday. The song was a distinct change in Minaj's previous work on mixtapes and features, thus receiving mixed to positive reviews from critics, commending lyrical content and distinctiveness, and critiquing that it did not fit her "Barbie" persona well. An accompanying music video which features a helicopter chase, and militaristic jungle and desert scenes, was positively received. The song bubbled under the Billboard 100 at twenty-two, and peaked at sixty-five on the Hot R&B and Hip-Hop chart.
Background
In an interview with Rap up in March 2010, Minaj revealed the title to the song, and Garrett later hinted around details around his single with Minaj, stating,
"I just did Nicki’s first single featuring me. It’s gonna be a fucking bomb. It’s very, very explosive! It’s a club banger. It’s a lot broader than what people would expect her to come with. The record puts her in the game in a way that says she should’ve been here a long time ago. She has a real way of how she wants to do this. It’s just gonna be a surprise when it comes. She just wants to make it as huge as possible."
Additionally, co-producer Alex da Kid said, "I started on the train and finished in the studio. I knew it was special from the start. It wasn't like I was aiming for Nicki with this track; I had a idea I thought was crazy. Nicki heard it and the rest was history." In an interview with MTV news, Minaj stated when she first heard the song she felt she was in and fell in love with the drum beats, and commented, "It's a very rare. ... You're not gonna get the song the first time you hear it. After the second or third time, you're gonna be like, 'Whoa, what is this?' It sounds nothing like anything that's out right now." She also called the song "next-level futuristic", and said that she chose Garrett for the song in that he would be the best to "illustrate Nicki Minaj", as he got her and her personality". In an interview on the set of the video shoot for "Massive Attack", Minaj said, "I'm excited for people to hear me ... doing more than one verse. It's really creative. I wanted to be theatrical, but I am very serous about what I do." Also on the set of the video, Garrett said, "We wanted to give her something that was global," he continued. "We wanted to give her something that was urban; we wanted to give her something that was mainstream pop, you know what I mean, that the world could get a chance to see her out on this pedestal. And of course, you know, I had to come along with her, because I've got an album dropping soon." The song made its debut March 29, 2010 on WhQT The song leaked onto the internet on March 30, 2010, the day before its music video premiere on 106 and Park The single's art cover was revealed on April 1, 2010, featuring a still of Minaj in the music video as a ninja and comic book font designs. Alex da Kid said that a lot of artists wanted the beat such as Jamie Foxx and Young Jeezy but he gave it to Nicki because it fit her "quirky, left-field vibe."
Alex da Kid was also interviewed by Rap-Up, and when asked about the commercial flop of the song and he said, "My whole thing [is that] I don’t want to do anything that’s the same as what’s out there, I think 'Massive Attack' may have been too different. If we would've put a big feature on it, like a Kanye or Rihanna or someone, I think it might've done a bit better. It needed something familiar about it."
Here are some images of Massive attack:
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