2014. The Pinkprint. Nicki Minaj's third studio album — her most personal. It opens with grief. Closes with reinvention. Contains a song about her miscarriage. Contains a song called "Only." Contains several declarations of dominance so complete they required no response from anyone in the industry.

And then, as a bonus iTunes track, she put "Truffle Butter" on it. Because why not. The range.

Peak at #14 on the Billboard Hot 100. Grammy nominated for Best Rap Performance at the 58th ceremony. The Recording Academy — the same institution that has given Grammys to things we will not name here — heard the title "Truffle Butter" and said: yes. nominate it. send the invite. Field certified.

Truffle butter is real. It is black truffle — Tuber melanosporum, the most prized fungus on earth — shaved thin and folded into high-fat European butter. A 3-oz jar runs about $40. You use it on pasta, risotto, steak, scrambled eggs. It melts on contact. It makes everything taste like money.

The song title has a secondary meaning that Nicki Minaj was fully aware of when she titled it. She has not clarified. She doesn't need to. The condiment angle is funnier and the field is running with it.

Three of the biggest names in rap. One song. Let us examine what the cosmos assembled in that session.

Nineteen85 — Drake's signed producer, the man behind some of Take Care's most important moments — made this beat during sessions for Nothing Was the Same (2013). It sat. Drake looked at it and said: give it to Nicki.

That is a good friend. That is also an excellent business decision. A Nothing Was the Same deep cut becomes a Grammy-nominated Pinkprint single. The economy of good taste.

The beat is deliberately unhurried. No urgency. The bass sits deep. The hi-hat patterns are loose. It dares you to find the pocket and then moves the pocket when you do. This is why Nicki sounds so comfortable on it — she doesn't chase the beat, she occupies it.

The 58th Grammy Awards. Best Rap Performance nominees. Somebody in a committee room at the Recording Academy — an institution with a complicated history around hip-hop recognition — looked at a list that included "Truffle Butter" and said:

The field has enormous respect for this decision. Not because of the nomination — because of the commitment to it. Nobody in that room blinked. Truffle Butter appeared on the Grammy ballot and everyone behaved professionally. That is poise. That is institutional courage.

The Pinkprint is not a fun album. It opens with Nicki processing a miscarriage on a track called "All Things Go." It contains "Grand Piano" — a breakup song of genuine weight. She is telling you who she is, what she lost, what she survived.

And then: "Truffle Butter." As a bonus track. Hidden at the end of the iTunes edition. Because after all of that, you get to also just rap.

This is the move of someone who contains multitudes and is comfortable with all of them simultaneously. The Sagittarius range. The whole album is the field record. Truffle Butter is the receipt. You can be the most technically gifted rapper alive and also put a song called Truffle Butter on your album. Nobody said you couldn't.