Photo by Valerie Macon/AFP/Getty Images
When Nicki Minaj’s fourth studio album Queen dropped on Friday, the third track “Barbie Dreams” instantaneously went viral. On the Queens rapper’s version of The Notorious B.I.G.’s “Just Playing (Dreams),” she pokes fun at many of her contemporaries such as Drake, Meek Mill, Young Thug, 6ix9ine, and DJ Khaled. As it turns out, Nicki recorded almost the entire song in one take.
In new Rolling Stone interview, Nicki’s recording engineer Aubry “Big Juice” Delaine described how the song came together:
She told me to load up that beat, put it on loop, and give her about 20 or 30 minutes. Then she goes in the booth and lays that shit down, and that’s what you got. I didn’t know what she was gonna say. I wanna say she did 90% of that in one take. She mumbled the hook when she was laying the verses, laid the rest of it, went back and put the hook in the middle.
Elsewhere in the interview, Delaine added that Nicki freestyled 65 percent or 75 percent of the opening track “Ganja Burns.” He also revealed that the bulk of Queen was recorded during a marathon recording session from the Monday through Thursday night before its release.
Genius recently broke down “Barbie Dreams” in a video:
Read the full interview at Rolling Stone and read all the verified lyrics to Nicki Minaj’s “Barbie Dreams” on Genius now.
