Nicki Minaj, Love Me Enough | Music Lifts 🎶 🏋

In the 7^th edition of Music Lifts (2024), we’re uplifted by Nicki Minaj performing, “Love Me Enough” assisted by Monica and Keyshia Cole.

Welcome to Music Lifts 🎶 🏋, a column that seeks to highlight songs that encourage, inspire, and uplift the spirit; songs that exude fortitude, positivity, and resolve, even in the face of adversity.  Featured songs aren’t genre-specific; songs may or may not be faith-based. The goal is for these songs to make you feel better – be LIFTED to new heights!  So, for the 7^th edition of Music Lifts 🎶 🏋 (2024), we highlight 🎵 “Love Me Enough” as performed by Nicki Minaj.

“I thought that everyone who loved me would leave me / But, fuck that, I love this new chick named Me-me.” Throughout her career, Grammy-nominated rapper Nicki Minaj has proven herself to be versatile. She can hang with the boys, dropping some of the naughtiest and nastiest bars ever, or, she can embrace pop and serve up melodic vibes.  On “Love Me Enough,” the 23^rd and final cut from her 2023 album, Pink Friday 2, Minaj gives us pop-oriented R&B vibes (Murda Beatz, Charlie Handsome, and Joseph L’Étranger produce).  Even though she sings some, on most of this particular song, she spits bars. She leaves the singing up to Grammy-winning R&B artist, Monica, and Grammy-nominated R&B artist, Keyshia Cole. Monica is the first voice heard on “Love Me Enough,” singing the pre-chorus (“Got off on the toxic words / I used to think love had to hurt”). Cole follows, performing the chorus (“No one needs to save me / ‘Cause I love me enough for all of y’all”).

Nicki delivers agile rhymes in the first and second verse, supporting the sentiment of her sistas.  “I used to think my happiness dependent on a man,” she raps in the first verse, adding, “The worst drug of all, the addiction to a man.” Facts. Notably, at the end of the second verse, Minaj gives some thoughtful, melodic, pitched moments:

“First things first, all my girls, know your worth

Self-love is the greatest love on Earth

Cry your eyes out, get it out, it’s the worst

But love don’t hurt, no.”

Later, we get a post-chorus, performed by Monica and Keyshia Cole, empowering themselves (“Love me enough”).  There’s also a bridge, sung mostly by Nicki Minaj, with some contributions from Monica, highlighted by the lyric, “Celebrate, celebrate / Celebrate you walked away.” Monica closes out the empowering “Love Me Enough”, which tells the ladies, don’t let these men and the illusion of love bring you down and destroy you. Walk away, power up, and love yourself!  

🎙 Nicki Minaj • 💿 Pink Friday 2 • 🏷 Republic • 📅 2023

Nicki Minaj, Love Me Enough: Music Lifts 🎶 🏋 No. 7 (2024) [📷: Brent Faulkner / The Musical Hype; Republic; Hamid Tajik, Qamar Rehman, vansh mehta, Viridiana Rivera via Pexels]