Monsters of Television

This week was the Nicki Minaj episode. While Nicki is generally amazing when on another artist’s track, her solo stuff is sub-par. “Super Bass” might be the only thing off of her largely lackluster discography that I really enjoy. See, you get music reviews here at Monsters of Television as well. We’re so comprehensive.

Nicki Minaj is such a unique person. Have you ever read up on her background? You should. As much as Gaga is beating us over the head showing people it’s ok to be weird and to be comfortable with who you are, Nicki does it just by unapologetically being her crazy and awesome self. This week, the crews had to incorporate aspects of Nicki’s different personalities into their dances.

The episode opened with a huge dance routine done by all of the four remaining crews: IaMmE, Street Kingdom, Phunk Phenomenon and Iconic Boyz. It was just meh, but it did make me wanna go find a DDR machine and bust out some Jane Jana. Major props if you know what the hell I’m talking about.

No shit duh of course how could it be any different it’s a constant of the universe that IaMmE was safe. It’s redundant for me to talk about how awesome they are and how their unique “brain bangin'” style is going to win them this competition so I won’t mention how overwhelmingly impressive and innovative they are. I’ll just jump right into their routine. They had to use games as a representation of Nicki’s childhood. The package scared me a bit. “Games” is a very vague idea and as some of the crew members (being from different countries) said, they have different ideas of games. They had to be universal and really nail it or else the routine would make no sense.

But of course they killed it. Even dancing to a slow mix of an already slow song, “Moment for Life” they beat that challenge. I had to watch it a few times just to try and find all the various childhood games they incorporated such as whack-a-mole, jump rope, hopscotch and ending by building a human swing set. And once again the judges loved them. They don’t have the same fanboy hysteria I do over the group but they consistently have great things to say.

Iconic Boyz was the second safe crew this week and honestly, I’m getting pretty tired of them. Yeah they’re cute and yeah they can dance but I can’t help but feel that if they make it it’s just because they’re young. If Randy Jackson presented America’s Cutest Dance Crew With Great Potential then I’d be voting for them nonstop.

They had to become human dolls and move like marionettes. That sounds like a fun challenge but I feel it was wasted on them. I would have LOVED to see what IaMmE could have done with that. Well I immediately had to tell myself to shut up cause they were great. It was really funny and they incorporated puppetry into the dance moves very well. Maybe I’m being a little too hard on them after all…

Ha! Nicki Minaj has so few hits that they had to start going with other artists songs that she’s just featured on. Phunk Phenomenon had to battle their way from the bottom to the Luda song (featuring Nicki Minaj) song “My Chick Bad” using belly dancing in their routine. Street Kingdom had a very military/police based dance to some other sub-par Minaj song. Their costumes this week looked like they all just enlisted for the space colony armada in a Gundam series. Even though PP had the better dance i was sure SK was going to prevail.

ABDC really surprised my this week by actually kicking off the unreasonably loved Street Kingdom. The point seems moot though because the final two will be IaMmE and Iconic Boyz. Duh. Next week Kanye West is the featured superstar. I figured he would be the finale because any other episode would be racist. At least there will be good music again.

Final Thoughts:

• Umm Lil Mama, what is a “transviloquist”?
• Do you think Lil Mama just felt incredibly obsolete with Nicki Minaj around?