Azealia Banks

on the other hand -- and I really liked night time, my time, this isn't about that -- there is a difference between sky ferreira and azealia banks that probably has a great deal to do with how the "whole narrative" shakes out

sorry West Bumblefrickin' nowhere London

I liked the 1991 EP and Fantasea mixtape but all the gross shit she's said since then has made me definitively stop caring about her.

just make a good goddamn song and all is forgiven

I am certain that the obvious difference between Azealia and Sky is playing into the way this narrative is being spun/received but then again I am not aware of Sky Ferreira saying anything remotely like any of the objectionable things posted on this thread

http://i1.wp.com/vigilantcitizen.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/7528190724_d35b4731fd_z-e1343855148482.jpg%3Fresize%3D330%2C500

http://i1.wp.com/vigilantcitizen.com/wp-content/uploads/2012/08/7528190724_d35b4731fd_z-e1343855148482.jpg

"just make a good goddamn song and all is forgiven"

I guess that's the sticking point for me, though -- everything Azealia Banks has released (for various definitions of "released," etc.) has been pretty good to really damn good. you can argue that it's mostly the fault of the beats, but in 2014 you can argue that for basically everyone, and even if Banks is more or less running through the same set of branding adjectives she's doing it with style and skill, at least.

everything Azealia Banks has released (for various definitions of "released," etc.) has been pretty good to really damn good.

I fundamentally disagree with this

i think her problem is that she either hasn't shown the skill or the desire to write a crossover pop song

"212" was completely accidental in that sense. but everything she releases just screams "small and very limited fanbase"

& i would more or less agree w/ katherine re the quality of her work

and by "crossover pop song" i don't mean selling out, she seems particularly well positioned to something that could appeal to a bunch of people while still sticking to her core sound and vision

but, i dunno. "ATM jam" just wasn't very good. i guess that was the one.

and if she didn't wanna have to write crossover stuff she probably should've signed with any number of indie labels that i'm sure would've been glad to have her

I mean, this is probably not a good comparison for, uh, feud reasons, but someone like angel haze has released a good amount of genuinely bad songs. but then azealia probably dodged that by never actually releasing an album

the problem with conflicts/disagreements in taste is that I am looking at "angel haze has released a good amount of genuinely bad songs" and thinking "... and so has Azealia Banks, who in my opinion has yet to release a song I would call 'good'; plus, Angel Haze leaking her album points to the fact that the album was actually done/recorded, which is something Azealia Banks seems unable to accomplish"

basically, I don't think Azealia Banks has the work ethic necessary to be a recording artist, leaving aside all opinions on talent

the trouble with everything AZB has put out post-"212" hasn't so much been that it's outright terrible (well, apart from "atm jam") - more boring, demoish, stuck in a holding pattern, makes her look like she's a one-trick artist. aside from "young rapunxel" which was a laudable but failed experiment. we haven't seen any evidence of her putting together a strong, coherent statement - which angel haze had done and then some even before her album...

Never really saw AB as a statement artist to begin with though whereas Haze had something to say from the get go. I mean some artists take entire careers to grow into that shit and some do perfectly fine without doing so at all.

The 1991 ep was hardly boring or demoish. I think those songs together definitely represent a coherent statement that she should've ran with. But this industry waits for not a soul, so poor dat.

Really? As much as I liked it it felt pretty loose and thrown together and wasn't exactly a complete reflection of her repertoire.

See, I felt the same way about Fantasea. Totally a random assortment of songs with ~sea-punk references. I like it, but coherent it is not.

fantasea gets a pass from me because it came out more or less at the same time as 1991, so it felt like the "getting this weird stuff out my system" dump to accompany the polished EP

*cohesive

The difference between her and Sky Ferriera is that I think Sky genuinely wanted to do something that was against the grain of what her a&r thought they'd signed but in the end she made a good record. I think Banks just took the big money advance, pissed it against a wall and then turned in an average or worse record that the label spent 2 years in a stand off about. In a nutshell "we gave you $X, we want a record that's worth that amount of money".
That's the hidden dialogue behind most of these stories.
It's also exactly what happened with XL, she took an advance to make a record, didn't make one, asked for more money, was told no, fired everyone on her team and XL dropped her cos it wasn't worth the hassle.

let's not forget there's a long history of major labels fucking over artists, clashing with them over aesthetics etc, and generally being in the wrong in these situations. sky ferreira's a pretty good example.

yeah but...this isn't exactly a secret? like, I feel bad for anybody who ends up in the grip of a shitty major label contract, but...it's not like people haven't been yelling for years & years & years that when you sign to a major, you're going to lose autonomy, you're basically trading it for an advance

these kids haven't been listening to people yell for years & years though

they do have this thing called the internet though I heard it has lots of information

and she'd already been through a contract process once, right? when you sign with a major, come on...nobody who's worked with any other musicians at a professional level, even small-time, for half a year, hasn't collected several "I knew a guy and then the majors" stories. they are literally some of the first things you hear if you get even the tiniest little two-hundred-people-showed-up-at-the-New-York-show buzz going. every musician age 14 and up has heard that major labels are dicey business.

good point

http://answers.yahoo.com/question/index?qid=20091019192910AAgKF9q

ya for example they could read the rapgenius page for the song Labels by GZA

Lot of people, you know what I'm saying
That be getting misinformed, thinking everything is everything
You could just get yourself a little deal, whatever
You know what I'm saying
You gonna get on, you gonna get rich
And all these labels be trying to lure us in like spiders
Into the web, you know what I'm saying

RZA’s talking about his experience with Cold Chillin' Records who released GZA’s first album Words from the Genius. In the book Check the Technique, RZA states, “Cold Chillin' didn’t promote the record, unfortunately. I felt good to be on that label because they was the Def Jam of that era. But things didn’t work out for me. I wasn’t getting no recognition, so i bounced. It was back to the drawing board.” and “I came to [Cold Chillin' records] where i was just as lyrically talented as their top artists and they didn’t recognize that. They fucked my album up”.

So sometimes people gotta come out and speak up
And let people understand
That you know you gotta read the label
You gotta read the label
If you don't read the Label you might get poisoned

Just like people who don’t read food labels, the people not checking the record label could get screwed over.

[Masta Killa]
Bomb these niggas God!

Masta Killa was in the booth during the recording of this track and starts it off by encouraging the GZA to drop some lyrics on these record labels.

lol

yeah but...this isn't exactly a secret? like, I feel bad for anybody who ends up in the grip of a shitty major label contract, but...it's not like people haven't been yelling for years & years & years that when you sign to a major, you're going to lose autonomy, you're basically trading it for an advance

― joe perry has been dead for years (underrated aerosmith bootlegs I have owned), Monday, January 27, 2014 7:45 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yeah...everyone does know or should know that deals are a gamble, but the jackpot they'd win if it works out, however unlikely, remains irresistible. it seems like so many artists have the vague idea that not being signed means making whatever you want and releasing it whenever you want, but don't actually realize how important those freedoms are to them until they don't have them.

some dude otm, the story of major label deals is "I knew it would probably suck but I could not turn down the chance and when it didn't pan out I wished I'd listened to the part that knew it was gonna suck"

but anybody who claims they really couldn't find good information about how major label deals work? after already having had a label deal with a large indie? come on, now.

I think there's just an assumption that once you have fame/a fanbase, there's always some kind of escape hatch for you. even if you have to beg to be dropped from your label on twitter to find the escape hatch.

i feel also like when '212' dropped there was more of a mystique about the song as a whole, and not just her rapping—and then the whole "(ft. lazy jay)" reworking of the song's official title happened, which took a little bit of shine off the idea that she was crafting beats instead of just rapping over previously extant songs in their entirety. obviously being skilled at picking banging jams and rapping like hell over them is nothing to sneeze at but that seemed to be the first crack in her veneer imo (and her subsequent feuds with producers who have worked with her to create beats tailored to her style haven't helped, even if you take prevailing notions about 'difficult women' into account).

"212" still slams

yeah but...this isn't exactly a secret? like, I feel bad for anybody who ends up in the grip of a shitty major label contract, but...it's not like people haven't been yelling for years & years & years that when you sign to a major, you're going to lose autonomy, you're basically trading it for an advance

so? doesn't mean it doesn't happen. not really surprising that every young brash upstart kid thinks they can make it work for them even despite the warnings.

i mean, it's not just sky ferreira and azealia banks. fiona apple, jojo, toni braxton, nina sky, that's just off the top of my head - regardless of whether they "should" have "known" the major label game they'd be expected to play, i don't think placing the blame on the artist is a particularly helpful way to assess these matters.

i think her problem is that she either hasn't shown the skill or the desire to write a crossover pop song

"212" was completely accidental in that sense. but everything she releases just screams "small and very limited fanbase"

it's interesting also how often this happens to rappers who aren't accepted by hip-hop's core fanbase, too - we were talking about yelawolf and angel haze the other week, both of whom never seemed suited to major label expectations/making crossover pop songs, but the fact that they stood out from other rappers (for superficial reasons as well as artistic ones)...made the major labels think they would be? azealia banks seems to fit into this pattern as well. the body of work that would display these artists at their best (reservation, trunk muzik, imagine a less amateurish fantasea) isn't accepted by the audience that would accept the equivalent from a chief keef type, but neither is it a crossover pop album in any sense.

i wonder if they'd have fared better on major labels a decade or two ago, when cult artists could be sustained in that system more easily?

i also wonder whether it'd be completely impossible for a major label to attempt to make some of the stronger/hookier moments on reservation a crossover pop hit, on its own terms? stranger records have charted.

i guess the larger question is what you do with critically acclaimed, very distinct artists with a cult fanbase that isn't part of a larger ecosystem.

i mean, it's not just sky ferreira and azealia banks. fiona apple, jojo, toni braxton, nina sky, that's just off the top of my head - regardless of whether they "should" have "known" the major label game they'd be expected to play, i don't think placing the blame on the artist is a particularly helpful way to assess these matters.

but...I mean...can you imagine any terms under which the majors would operate differently from the way they literally always have? I have punk rock sympathies too, I'd just love to run an editorial at MRR that really calls out these major label shitbags for the tools they are and gets serious results, but that's going to have zero effect, like anything else. hoping for an artist-focused major label is vain. the offices of big labels are staffed by people who intended to change things from the inside. "you can change things from the inside" is in fact a pitch they give you when you express reluctance about signing. the choice is autonomy one one's own terms without the global support of a major, or compromise. that's always going to be the choice.

right, i'm not disputing that, but you're saying it with the benefit of many years of experience. i'm saying that firstly, it's understandable that any young artist (not specifically AZV) would not heed that advice, and secondly, when her campaign turns into this mess, pointing the finger exclusively at her is probably unhelpful and doesn't tell the full story

Tangentially, re: Sky, I'd love to know how much her cancelled album cost. Reportedly featured Dallas Austin, Greg Kurstin, Paul Epworth, Bloodshy & Avant and Linda Perry. Proper old-school major-label $$$ madness.

For all I know, Banks's label team might be incompetent and/or malicious but her propensity to publicly fall out with collaborators - most recently Disclosure and Pharrell - makes me disinclined to blame the label alone.

i wouldn't say incompetent/malicious, just the usual narrow-mindedness about what a crossover pop hit can be. when i read that list of expensive sky ferreira collaborators my heart pretty much sinks. greg kurstin, sia, paul epworth, none of these are exciting musicians to me, and none of them are all that suited to bringing out individuality in artists. when i hear the angel haze album i certainly blame the label more than her for it turning out badly - she'd already proved herself capable of making great music, and maybe she had bad instincts but it was certainly the label who encouraged her to dump horrible "anthemic" choruses and sia moaning all over dirty gold.

prob worth pointing out that AZB's behaviour pales in comparison to, say, chris brown or r kelly, both of whom have strong industry-supported careers.

don't really want to be defending her this strongly - she seems generally unpleasant on twitter and i haven't liked any music she's done since "1991" - but i'm just wary of the increasing consensus that "AZB's making a mess of her album because she's such a bitch" b/c i doubt that's the whole story

Comparison to Brown and Kelly is meaningless. We're talking about whether she's difficult to work with, not weighing up Twitter beefs against violence and rape.

Tangentially, re: Sky, I'd love to know how much her cancelled album cost. Reportedly featured Dallas Austin, Greg Kurstin, Paul Epworth, Bloodshy & Avant and Linda Perry. Proper old-school major-label $$$ madness.

yeah there is a fascinating story in here no doubt

"it was certainly the label who encouraged her to dump horrible "anthemic" choruses and sia moaning all over dirty gold."

I'm not sure that's clear from Angel Haze's earlier records, though. Tracks like "CHI" from Reservation don't actually have Sia, but they do have the sort of big, "inspirational" chorus that you associate with Sia. You might not like that kind of thing, but it seems pretty clear that Angel Haze does.

yeah i don't know if there's any evidence to back up that statement about angel haze either.

i'm still really confused about why there was a rush to release it before the end of 2013. Some sort of contractual obligation?

IIRC she leaked it because the label was planning to sit on it until 2014 and threatened to continue doing so unless they put it out in 2013

the 2014 release date had been pencilled in for months and months so for haze to suddenly throw a fit in december was weird - i've no idea what actually went down but it's been speculated that either the label was trying to bury a poor album or something about an earlier release date would have somehow benefited haze contractually

Tracks like "CHI" from Reservation don't actually have Sia, but they do have the sort of big, "inspirational" chorus that you associate with Sia. You might not like that kind of thing, but it seems pretty clear that Angel Haze does

yeah this is true, and it's always been kinda-present in her music and definitely in her rhetoric, but the point is that left to her own devices the inspirational choruses weren't as heavy-handed or trudging as on her album

Tangentially, re: Sky, I'd love to know how much her cancelled album cost. Reportedly featured Dallas Austin, Greg Kurstin, Paul Epworth, Bloodshy & Avant and Linda Perry. Proper old-school major-label $$$ madness.

at the very least a million dollars, i think? from nabisco's piece on her:

“I signed a million-dollar record deal,” she says, “and never saw any money. It all got spent on planes and writing."

i think their logic was that if they just had her write w/ as many hit songwriter-producers as possible then she could score a smash and have it all work out, but the singles they had her record ("obsession" was meant to be the big one for the u.s., amusingly) really tanked and they had no idea what to do with her after that because they had lost so much money on the whole thing.

shoulda bought more planes, less writing