It's kind of ridiculous how talented Azealia Banks is, in 5 years she has delivered an impeccable catalogue, unparalleled actually.
soon she is to release her second official album "Second Wave II", it's perhaps one of the most anticipated albums creatively.

I anticipate big things on mass scale for Azealia Banks as she is without a doubt one of the best artist to emerge in the last few years.
Azealia is innovative and avant-garde whilst intuitively taps into the realm of pop accessibility.


Azealia just released a video for one of my favorite songs from "Broke With Expensive Taste", titled "SODA"



And also the first single from FANTASEA II album titled "Movin' On Up"



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[Edited 4/1/18 7:21am]

No.
Why?

Nick715 said:

This is an April Fool's joke, right?

.

She's has only moderate talent but whatever talent she has it's largely overshadowed by the really crappy personality and attitude she has. And what little I did like from her music isn't really from her, it's really her producers (cuz I love singing and rapping over the housey beats). If she stays on her meds for the rest of her career I might get back into her, but for now I've moved on to others.

lezama said:

Nick715 said:

This is an April Fool's joke, right?

.

She's has only moderate talent but whatever talent she has it's largely overshadowed by the really crappy personality and attitude she has. And what little I did like from her music isn't really from her, it's really her producers (cuz I love singing and rapping over the housey beats). If she stays on her meds for the rest of her career I might get back into her, but for now I've moved on to others.

THIS.

hausofmoi7 said:

No. Why?

word... they need my AB playlist!...

1. 212

2. 1991

3. Luxury

4. The Big Big Beat

5. Heavy Metal & Reflactive

6. Chi Chi

7. Ice Princess

8. Chasing Time

9. Crown

10. ATM Jam

11. Escapades

12. Desperado

13. Skylar Diggins

14. Queen Of Clubs

and her videos are always well done....

aint no April Fools required...

RJOrion said:

Azealia Banks is easily the most talented female MC in the game right now, and its not even close... people are running with the "mainstream media" portrayal of her as some deranged mad-woman when its not the case at all...she's just too outspoken (and too emotional while being outspoken) in voicing her displeasure with an industry she needs help and recognition from... but her well rounded abilities as a MC/singer/entertainer/fashionista are unmatched, compared to the chickenheads and strip-hop artists currently being passed off as "rappers" and "MCs"...AB is an MC's MC...find me another woman equally adept at rhyming multisyllabic bars over beats rangin fro 80 - 120 BPMs, with flawless execution...ill wait....forever...

Her talent as an MC aside. She went into a total racist/homophobic tirade against Zayn Malik on twitter and shifted her tirade against a 14 years old afterwards, it didn't help when the kid basically shut her down. If she needed help and recognition from her peers, she made it harder for herself.

Hamad said:

RJOrion said:

Azealia Banks is easily the most talented female MC in the game right now, and its not even close... people are running with the "mainstream media" portrayal of her as some deranged mad-woman when its not the case at all...she's just too outspoken (and too emotional while being outspoken) in voicing her displeasure with an industry she needs help and recognition from... but her well rounded abilities as a MC/singer/entertainer/fashionista are unmatched, compared to the chickenheads and strip-hop artists currently being passed off as "rappers" and "MCs"...AB is an MC's MC...find me another woman equally adept at rhyming multisyllabic bars over beats rangin fro 80 - 120 BPMs, with flawless execution...ill wait....forever...

Her talent as an MC aside. She went into a total racist/homophobic tirade against Zayn Malik on twitter and shifted her tirade against a 14 years old afterwards, it didn't help when the kid basically shut her down. If she needed help and recognition from her peers, she made it harder for herself.

mostly all these knucklehead artists say and do stupid shit on the internet/social media... but since her targets have been welol connected people in the game, its backfired on her...Russell Crowe, Zayn Malik, and the lil babaygirl with Disney signing her checks?...those are not the right battles to pick...she definitely needs to chill and pick her battles morer wisely...you cant fight and kick and scream your way into the Millionaires club...sacrifices have to be made...in more ways than one...

RJOrion said:

Hamad said:

Her talent as an MC aside. She went into a total racist/homophobic tirade against Zayn Malik on twitter and shifted her tirade against a 14 years old afterwards, it didn't help when the kid basically shut her down. If she needed help and recognition from her peers, she made it harder for herself.

mostly all these knucklehead artists say and do stupid shit on the internet/social media... but since her targets have been welol connected people in the game, its backfired on her...Russell Crowe, Zayn Malik, and the lil babaygirl with Disney signing her checks?...those are not the right battles to pick...she definitely needs to chill and pick her battles morer wisely...you cant fight and kick and scream your way into the Millionaires club...sacrifices have to be made...in more ways than one...

Yep, everything is scrutinized to the max thanks to social media and this is not her fault. But she had all the opportunities to make this meduim work for her, its just a shame that she didn't use it wisely.

But she's not R Kelly, Woody Allen, George Bush Jr or O.J Simpson.
Sure, I have not always agreed with what she had to say, I actually strongly disagreed.

When Azealia Banks starts committing war crimes and kills 1 million civilians and pollutes a whole countries soil and water with depleted uranium that is causing birth defects that is estimated to continue for generations to come, or she starts having relationships with children.
let me know.




Until then.....





Azealia Banks Absolutely Deserves A Second Chance

https://www.google.com.au...format=amp

There are few artists more divisive than Azealia Banks. Since she stormed the music industry with the brilliantly abrasive banger “212” back in 2011, the young star has seen her career derailed by label dramas, album delays and well-documented Twitter feuds. Focus has been shifted from her genuinely innovative back catalogue to her incendiary public persona, for which she has been crucified by both the music industry and the media. But Banks is a fighter. Over the past few years she’s been busy making an acting debut (in Love Beat Rhymes), readying the long-awaited Fantasea II mixtape and polishing fresh visuals for 2014 album cut ‘Soda’, but will the world ever forgive her previous altercations and just focus on the music?

The issue of accountability has been omnipresent over the last few months. Editors have been fired for old tweets, endless musicians have had their social media accounts combed for problematic opinions and even reliably-woke pop acts like Dua Lipa and Troye Sivan have been called out for using a racial slur. We live in a digital age which offers us all the opportunity to overshare. Unsurprisingly, many of us seize this opportunity, tweeting our every opinion without considering the repercussions. Publicists are now starting to realize the damages these rants can cause – a famous example is drunk Adele having her phone confiscated – but do we really want a world in which the controversial debates raised by these low-level scandals are suppressed?

Unlike so many media-trained robots, Azealia Banks has been admirably uncensored from the very beginning of her career. When Iggy Azalea landed a position on the coveted XXL Freshmen cover back in 2012 over an arguably more deserving Banks, the star didn’t hold back; instead, she called out Azalea for her straight-up racist “runaway slave master” lyric. Azalea’s “blaccent” and reliance on a co-sign from T.I. (who responded in spectacularly sexist fashion to Banks’ comments, sparking yet another beef) also undeniably played a part in her success, yet the legitimate talking points of appropriation and misogyny were ignored and, instead, Banks gained a reputation for being angry and bitter.


Things deteriorated, with Banks’ debut album being delayed and a series of new, more incendiary, online comments being made in the meantime. She fired out racially-charged and homophobic slurs left, right and center, often apologizing and explaining her need to work on her “really hot temper”. She also fucked up and got into some seriously inexcusable physical altercations, but none of this makes her, in any way, unique, especially in a world which seems plagued by a new controversy or lawsuit every day.

Banks’ homophobic slurs, for example, are nothing new: hip-hop has a long history of homophobia, as does the music industry more generally. This is just the tip of the iceberg: XXXTentacion scored a number 2 album on the Billboard charts despite allegedly battering his pregnant girlfriend, Chris Brown’s career went on to flourish after he beat Rihanna and countless legendary rock stars have had a blind eye turned to their histories of statutory rape. These examples aren’t raised to diminish the severity of Banks’ admittedly horrible tirades, but they are used to demonstrate that plenty of men are continually allowed to succeed despite committing actual crimes far more serious than anything Banks has done. It’s nice to think that, in a post-#metoo world, famous, powerful men will be held accountable for their actions, but how difficult is it to truly believe that when the United States is ruled by a man with his own alleged history of sexual assault?

Sure, Banks has always been hot-headed and used her Twitter account as a weapon, especially at the start of her career. She talks shit online – plenty of us are guilty of it, but few of us have our accounts held under a microscope. Banks has also been a victim. She’s been subjected to interference tantamount to sabotage from label execs ever since she was signed to a shitty development deal by XL Recordings at 17 years old; she’s had her creative control compromised, her agency stripped and her projects pushed back. Banks also struggles with mental illness, a fact she has mentioned on numerous occasions not to excuse her behavior, but to offer insight into her life and behavior.

The media has hopped on board too, rinsing Banks’ profile for clicks. In 2015, Broadly’s senior staff writer Mitch Sutherland sparked a Twitter beef with the rapper and then wrote a smug article about it, attempting to debunk her justifiable claims that white gay men are consistently guilty of blindly fetishizing or appropriating a culture which primarily belongs to black women. Two years later, Sutherland was exposed as a misogynist facilitating the success of alt-right website Breitbart by forwarding the pitches he was sent along with instructions to “mock this fat feminist”. He was subsequently fired.

Then, there were Banks’ well-documented accusations that Russell Crowe threw racial slurs at her, choked her and spat at her while throwing her out of his party. The rapper defended herself and broke down in tears on morning television, stating that RZA – former Wu-Tang member and director of Love Beats Rhymes – had turned a blind eye in order to keep his seat at the table. Things quickly got suspicious, with hotel staff claiming they had no CCTV footage and RZA later admitting that Crowe spat on her, but the damage had already been done. Banks later spoke out in more detail on the controversy, issuing a lengthy, emotional interview on everything from victimization and misogynoir to mental health and the sexualization of women in hip-hop.

For an endless string of stars, controversies either of this level or worse are forgiven or justified by their talent, but Banks had her career derailed almost instantly because she was pegged as the “angry black girl” – a notoriously racialized stereotype weaponized against all minorities to dismiss them or to imply their words aren’t rational, that they’re coming from a place skewed by passion.

Meanwhile, Banks’ stellar back catalogue has been ignored. The first demos she released showcased her sharp wit and versatile flow, whereas the eclectic samples she used – “Seventeen” and “The Chill$” sampled Ladytron and Peter Bjorn and John respectively – demonstrated a desire to experiment and transcend genres. She pushed this ethos further with the wildly innovative Fantasea mixtape, switching effortlessly between house, techno, pop and hip-hop, whereas the disarmingly consistent 1991 EP spawned stone-cold classics “Van Vogue” and “1991.”


These projects were released while Banks was locked in a series of frustrating arguments over single choices with her label, which was slowly disintegrating as key members jumped ship. By the time her full-length album, Broke With Expensive Taste, finally dropped in 2014, any momentum she had gained had been overshadowed by controversy. But the music was excellent. The Ariel Pink-featuring “Nude Beach A Go-Go” was an irresistibly catchy slice of batshit-crazy surf rock; “Idle Delilah” blends monkey squawks and steel drums to undeniably unique effect; even radio-ready single “Chasing Time,” a track made when execs felt Banks’ first single choice “Miss Amor” wasn’t mainstream enough, still knocks and shows off Banks’ impressive vocals. She continued this momentum with Slay-Z in 2016 (‘The Big Big Beat’ is a certified banger) and last year’s gritty ‘Chi Chi’, but her name has been tarnished to the point of no return while her equally – if not more – problematic contemporaries are being given the benefit of the doubt.

It is impossible to fully defend Azealia Banks. Some of the things she has said and done have been inexcusable, as her regular but lesser-documented apologies admit, but it’s undeniable that her media-driven downfall has been laced with misunderstanding, a lack of empathy and misogynoir. Social media has exposed all of our most problematic thoughts, but the constant unearthing of controversial tweets means that we can’t necessarily ‘cancel’ everyone: we’d have nobody left. This is not to absolve accountability, but is to question the way these controversies are handled; nowadays, all it takes is an apology tweet for people to turn the other way. Yes, Banks can be abrasive and offensive, but she’s also wildly experimental, musically innovative and leagues ahead of most of her peers in terms of creativity, skill and lyricism. If you really can’t analyze her problematic past in the context of her victimization, mental illness and willingness to be held accountable, then feel free to uncritically “cancel” her for good. But, by doing so, you might just be missing out on your new favorite musician.



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[Edited 4/3/18 4:30am]

She comes across as a very despicable person. I think she has mental issues that need to be attended to.