These aren’t uncommon opinions, but it’s significant for Minaj to position herself as a high-minded genre savior given the prejudices she has faced. As an immigrant whose brand is built on funny voices, crass rhymes, and curves—a “Barbie” persona, as she calls it—she’s often a target for snobs, racists, and/or sexists who say she’s responsible for the de-intellectualizing of rap. Or else she just gets treated as simple. “Sometimes as women in the industry—if you’re sexy or like doing sexy things—some people subconsciously negate your brain,” she said in 2014. “They think you’re stupid.”

Which would be a mistake. Watching Minaj spend her career deftly reconciling conflicting imperatives has, in fact, felt like watching someone solve a multivariable equation. She raps with sharp, amped-up complexity, but she also dishes out plush, lovey-dovey pop. She affects pink-swathed girlishness, and she glowers that she’ll put her “dick in your face.” Last year, she passed Aretha Franklin as the woman with the most Hot 100 entries ever, but she’s not done convincing people of her chops. “The culture never seems to want to give me my props as an M.C., as a lyricist, as a writer,” she told Gay. “I got to prove myself a hundred times, whereas the guys that came in around the same time as I did, they were given the titles so much quicker without anybody second-guessing.”

Tension’s been heightened around Queen due to the rise of Cardi B, the first commercially dominant female rapper since Minaj broke out a decade ago. It’s sexist to assume that two women in hip-hop will need to be rivals, and Minaj cheered when Cardi became the first female emcee to earn a solo No. 1 since 1998. But relations appeared to curdle, with Minaj in April publicly complaining about Cardi’s supposed ingratitude. She now laces Queen with barely veiled jabs toward Cardi—ones that amplify others’ regressive critiques about Cardi B’s slangy, blunt style and her past as a stripper. Azealia Banks once slandered her as “illiterate,” and a wave of condescending amazement gathered when Cardi held forth on American history in GQ. That background commentary unavoidably comes to the fore when Minaj raps, “Gotta be dumb to make me your rival.”

In the confusing rollout of Queen—various release dates, singles, and videos were floated and scrapped—Minaj has emphasized sweating the small stuff. She rewrote one song because Jay-Z didn’t praise it enough. She’s talking about revising two others even after they’ve been released, so as to fix errors caused by sleep deprivation and working till the last minute.

Tinkering in public is likely a show of perfectionism, but it also reads as insecurity, and the Minaj of Queen comes off like she’s filing a term paper: frantically, worriedly, and for the sake of the grade. She does check the boxes she wants to check, reaffirming herself as a wordsmith, balladeer, and conversation starter. But a greater sense of purpose isn’t present, nor is there enough of the madness, humor, and joy that made her a force in the first place. Rather than making the most of hard-won creative freedom, she’s stressing her reputation more than ever.