"The Boys" Nicki Minaj ft. Cassie

These days, you can blink and you'll miss another new Nicki Minaj single. Just weeks after releasing the candy-colored video for "I Am Your Leader," she's already back with "The Boys," a peppy girl-power collaboration that heralds the November re-release of her second album, Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded (now appended The Re-Up, an exorbitant mouthful of a title if I've ever heard one). "Boys" once again melds Minaj's hip-hop roots with her pop sensibilities—the most successfully that she's done so since "Super Bass"—jumping between winning rap punchlines ("I just come through with the Six like my name was Blossom") and a snappy, biting hook sung by R&B songstress Cassie. The problem is that the song is also kind of annoying, buried under a plethora of distractions, including inexplicable gunfire sound effects and inhuman levels of vocal distortion. B-