Azealia Banks

lol

perversely beginning to root for her now that everyone feels safe to slag her off in a way they'd never dare do to an artist at the crest of the hype wave

Aren't they slagging her off because she's spent three years pissing away goodwill and failing to release an album? I don't think people who hated 212 have been waiting three years before it was safe to speak.

In her defense, there was probably lots of label fuckery going on. (A recent profile of Mr. Motherfuckin eXquire, who was also a "beneficiary" of the internet-rap boom that swept her up, would bear this out, as would the trials of her rival Angel Haze.)

Also I suspect that the first "oh, huh" moment came when she had to pull the "212" video because she didn't credit Lazy Jay for essentially rapping over his unaltered track, which was a big factor in the initial bonkers reaction to it.

Here's the Mr. M.e. profile, btw. It unfairly reduces the Voice piece about him (which I edited) to being about his jokiness (which it isn't) but it is otherwise solid, and sad, and instructive as far as how hip-hop is received in internet-forward music culture.
http://www.rollingstone.com/music/news/mr-muthafuckin-exquires-music-biz-misadventures-20140620

No doubt the label botched this but other people who have butted heads with their labels, incl Angel Haze and Sky Ferreira, have come out of it with the public on their side. People generally want to believe that majors are full of know-nothing breadheads who ruin careers because they don't understand art, so Azealia's ability to alienate people who would instinctively back her up is quite remarkable. This is someone who recorded songs with Pharrell and Disclosure (presumably at significant expense) only to badmouth both of them. I'm generally on the artist's side and I hate snarky schadenfreude but come on, she's not an innocent victim.

i'm not defending AZB so much as rolling my eyes at the media and industry ppl who hyped her to the gills circa 212 but have now collectively decided it's ok to openly treat her like a joke. not doing a great job of being invested in her artistic development so much as ability to play the industry game

No doubt the label botched this but other people who have butted heads with their labels, incl Angel Haze and Sky Ferreira

i don't think this is true at all for angel haze, who put out a shit album that no one liked and/or bought. i also think this is azealia's problem.

I'm definitely not straight-up defending her. Just saying that watching the bubble (which slowly grew while I was running the Voice's music coverage) leak has been pretty interesting.

angel haze is an interesting comparison because she hasn't become a punchline in the same way that AZB has despite putting out a shit album that no one bought - she still gets taken seriously, gets coverage etc. it's not like she had HUGE hype in the first place anyway.

and yeah this conversation is about the life cycle of the hype bubble rather than any artist per se.

yeah people openly despise banks in a way that they don't other artists because she starts beefs, and imo that's all "she's a bitch" sexist backlash

Obvs I can't speak for everyone but people still seem to feel warmly towards Angel despite the disappointing album. I haven't seen any ha-ha schadenfreude, more "oh that's a shame, better luck next time".

that's all "she's a bitch" sexist backlash

Nah. Doubtless there's a sexist dimension too but if you spend three years pissing your talent up the wall and beefing with everybody you're going to alienate people. Are there any men who behave like this and don't get flak for it?

Bottom line is that you release a record that people love then you can get away with all the extraneous bullshit, which is why Kanye is doing fine and Tyler isn't.

The hype bubble story is a separate issue and something I'd like to read more about

tyler the creator is doing *more* than fine

and yes beef amongst any and all male rappers is celebrated and dissected like boutique television but every time azealia has dissed someone the reaction has been "HOW DARE SHE?"

and male rappers with track records much less impressive than "212" from artistic and commercial standpoints have been granted legitimacy to diss peers much more respected than the people azealia has come for

Please name one. Off the back of her artistic and commercial track record (ie ONE great song in 2011), Azealia has badmouthed Pharrell, Disclosure, Angel Haze, Iggy Azalea, Stone Roses, Rita Ora, Lily Allen, Baauer, ASAP Rocky, TI, Nicki Minaj and Lady Gaga. Clearly nbd to you but enough to get anyone a reputation.

oh heaven forbid someone diss that illustrious roster

I don't think being a woman protects Azealia Banks from being an idiot of limited talent.

a cunt is a cunt

Is she your cousin Jordan? Did you used to date? Or are you just trolling me on a slow Friday afternoon? Because your inability to understand why people might consider her obnoxious is really something.

Please name one.

random ass male rappers who diss famous rappers by saying they ghostwrote for them are treated as "news stories" all the time. ransom and nicki minaj. gillie da kid and lil wayne.

"tru life" beefed with dipset for year and was never pillaged by anyone for being a no name artist. joe budden beefed with people for a decade before he started to be treated like a clown with a one hit wonder.

basically any unknown male rapper can challenge the street bonafides of a famous rapper and their claims are immediately granted legitimacy but when azealia banks did that to asap rocky people acted like she crossed some line that no rapper should ever cross

i don't even like azealia's music but i find the concern trolling about her antics to be incredibly annoying

I don't think it's insane or unthinkable to find sexism in the dismissals of AB; they're clearly there, along with racism. What's annoying is that those dismissals overshadow and obscure legitimate criticism; I don't want to be lumped in with racists and sexists just because I've found little to no redeeming value in anything she's done.

sure there are plenty of legit criticisms about her and especially her music. but when it's all pinned on her acting up it reeks of people wanting this girl to stay in her place.

perversely beginning to root for her now that everyone feels safe to slag her off in a way they'd never dare do to an artist at the crest of the hype wave

― lex pretend, Friday, July 11, 2014 5:49 AM (12 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tbf i was a h8r from day 1 as the record itt clearly states and would like credit for this fact

her "212" fanbase is probably more fickle towards rappers in general than it is easily offended by a reckless social media presence. maura is right that artists like Mr. Motherfuckin eXquire litter the path she was on and all her twitter beefs just made people pay attention enough to notice when she dropped unsuccessful singles or fell out with her label.

i mean the fact that she took on so many controversial (and also female) artists and still always came out looking worse says more about her than anything else. how shitty do your singles have to be for rock critics to not want to enthusiastically back someone in a beef vs. Iggy Azalea?

very perceptive

lol Mr. Motherfuckin eXquire

her "212" fanbase is probably more fickle towards rappers in general than it is easily offended by a reckless social media presence. maura is right that artists like Mr. Motherfuckin eXquire litter the path she was on and all her twitter beefs just made people pay attention enough to notice when she dropped unsuccessful singles or fell out with her label.

i mean the fact that she took on so many controversial (and also female) artists and still always came out looking worse says more about her than anything else. how shitty do your singles have to be for rock critics to not want to enthusiastically back someone in a beef vs. Iggy Azalea?

You're really not giving her enough credit. You can only begin to argue that a fickle fanbase had anything to do with her struggles if you're going out of your way to overlook the blindingly obvious.

People like to know or at least get the impression that the artists they root for are winning and all her beefs were ugly,unflattering and self-destructive. It may not offend sensibilities but nobody wants to have to defend or invest in that. There's no way you can argue all that shit wasn't her primary undoing especially if, as we can readily assume, they were a genuine reflection of the kind of things that were happening behind the scenes. She wasn't attached to an already successful or burgeoning movement or artist, she burned bridges with almost everybody she worked with, its hardly any wonder that things didn't fall into place for her.

There's very little (if anything) to suggest that all the negative press garnered her singles any additional attention. People weren't reading stories about her in order to hear the music. And it doesn't really say anything of the quality of her singles that rock critics didn't go to bat for her and its kinda dumb to pretend that they would be compelled by such logic in deciding which horse they back in an internet beef. For all the bluster surrounding her, Iggy Azalea is too inert and lacking in self awareness to be cast in anything resembling a polemic. There was simply nothing of value to be mined there. Azalea was and will remain a Cipher until somebody with actual clout calls her out.

three of the four songs on the 1991 EP are very good. The Pharrell single and whatever that Rapunzel track was were pretty bad. I'd like her to make more music so there's some sort of a body of work to bother critiquing. Up to now she seems to be content to make money on public appearance fees and fashion shoots rather than recording and distributing music and that's kind of a bummer i guess.

Up to now she seems to be content to make money on public appearance fees and fashion shoots rather than recording and distributing music

she doesn't seem remotely content to do this, this is sort of the point? she's been yelling about how her label refuses to release her music for years now.

all her beefs were ugly,unflattering and self-destructive

many of them were childish and the volume of them was self-parodic but she was on point about iggy azalea's white privilege, i fail to see how *her* reputation suffered after the lily allen feud and wishing death and excrement on the stone roses is something we should all get behind

anyway the point isn't about her behaviour really, it's about fickleness and the hype cycle. it's a pile-on at this point, and a lot of the people doing the piling on were responsible for hyping her up to a massive degree (on the basis of one song). idk, if i was as enamoured of her talent/potential as they seemed to be, i'd be pretty excited that she now gets to release the music she wants. i'm not even that enamoured post-212 and i'm still going to check the album when, presumably, she chucks it out online.

and pleeeeenty of reprehensible people continue to get unswerving support from the industry and media. (LILY ALLEN, who also picks fights with everyone in sight, and is a huge racist to boot, but is ever so careful to only do it to the ~right people.) it basically seems like AZB is a laughing stock not because her output is terrible (it barely exists to be judged) or solely because she picks fights, but because she's not playing the industry game. which is a shit game with hypocritical rules tbh.

tl;dr the nature of the industry hype cycle and the people responsible for it are worse than azealia banks

i really like her on twitter

The thing is that Lily Allen has also been terrible from day one and as far as I can tell no one in the US knows who she is. At this point her brother is more likely to be recognized due to Game of Thrones.

not your point, but she's still more famous in the US than Banks

I think I have some paper towels in my kitchen that are more famous than Banks

i gather that tsrobodo was vehemently arguing with my posts but didn't really say anything i disagree with or even afaict anything that's mutually exclusive with what i said.

Lex, the timespan involved is beyond complaints about the fickleness of the hype cycle. There's not a single period in the history of pop when you could wait three years after your debut single and not suffer for it. Sky was lucky in that she never had a massive single to get people excited so few people were really waiting for her album. If Lana Del Rey had taken three years to make an album after Video Games, even without any beefs, do you think she wouldn't be seen as yesterday's news? Whether the delay is the fault of Azealia, the label or, I suspect, both that's what's stitched her up. If she had a great album out there I'm sure she'd be able to get away with all kinds of controversy. You can be slow or you can be obnoxious but you can't be both.

it seems weird to me to tell people that they "can't be obnoxious" as if music criticism is teaching kindergarten

Interpol is slow and obnoxious, DL

of course the label is the reason she hasn't released an album. she's released well over an album's worth of songs and has been chomping at the bit to have an LP out. whether people would've liked it is another matter but there's no question that the major label was just being a major label and not giving a release date to the majority of their artists who don't have a hit single on their hands so they can release the albums that do already have hits.

perversely beginning to root for her now that everyone feels safe to slag her off in a way they'd never dare do to an artist at the crest of the hype wave

― lex pretend, Friday, July 11, 2014 5:49 AM (12 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

tbf i was a h8r from day 1 as the record itt clearly states and would like credit for this fact

― rap steve gadd (D-40), Friday, July 11, 2014 6:05 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

lex's post is a super weird thing to say on a messageboard that is basically devoted to shitting on currently popular artists

d-40's post is just vmic lol

Up to now she seems to be content to make money on public appearance fees and fashion shoots rather than recording and distributing music

she doesn't seem remotely content to do this, this is sort of the point? she's been yelling about how her label refuses to release her music for years now.

proof is in the pudding imo; lack of leaked singles or odd mixtapes or anything of substance makes me a little leery about where this music is. will happily retract if there's a spontaneous album in the next two months but i dunno.

maybe it becomes harder to make songs once you publicly alienate every producer you've worked with

it seems weird to me to tell people that they "can't be obnoxious"

You don't read too good do you?

Schadenfreude is an inalienable right.