Azealia Banks

She did an interview and now everyone loves her lol

I'll give her this she's better than action bronson

Not to downplay the impact of race but I do think its a lil weird how everyone is pretending like she doesn't make retro hip house for hipsters that has little broad commercial appeal (and actually sounds quite a bit like iggy's pre-fancy records that were also not really broadly popular)

i liked her interview

iggy azalea is a fucking cartoon villain

the interviewer, whoever he is, was great. had a nice way of drilling-down deeply into topics.

i think it's a bit off-base to suggest that she does it to cling to her remaining relevance tho

― dyl, Saturday, December 6, 2014 2:02 PM (2 weeks ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

at this point i really have to wonder if she'd be even half as well known if she'd released all the same music but had no public conflicts with other (more famous) artists. i think she's mostly being honest and being herself on social media and not calculating this stuff to keep her in the headlines, but at this point it's her brand. that short period where the label controlled her twitter account and she didn't say anything controversial didn't do anything for her, and she knows that.

Have to assume they know better than we can the damage it caused behind the scenes before they stepped in.

everyone is pretending like she doesn't make retro hip house for hipsters that has little broad commercial appeal (and actually sounds quite a bit like iggy's pre-fancy records that were also not really broadly popular)

no one is pretending this! the conversation this week has barely touched on either one's music. banks can't say righteous things because her music only has niche appeal?

lol i dunno man im seeing lots of people become banks fans off this

but, whatever, good for her—if dudes threatening violence on each other is a legit way to make a career i dont see why this can't be too

to be clear i think ppl are like, she should be so much bigger than she is, and based on the music she's dropped so far i'd say she's doing pretty well for herself. she acknowledges as much in the interview when she says she's not trynna release a top 40 record ...

she could have been a lot more supported by her label and, in the year or so before her album came out, by the media. she's obviously not making top 40 bait but that's not the only marker of success here. this is v much a subsidiary point though.

(i think a lot of the banks fandom that's re-emerged has trace guilt for laughing at her for the past year in it)

"Her label could have supported her" assumes interscope (or any major) is interested in propping up any rap artist uninterested in top 40 hits, which they are not

Unless he's white and maybe kevin gates

*or

(I also think you drastically overstate azaelia's potential for popularity in the U.s. Without a hit vs traditional street or college rap but w/e)

i think she came a bit before her time in a way in that streams weren't yet incorporated into billboard data, so she had a viral hit but nothing to propel it upwards. like, if "212" had jumped into the charts on the back of streams, radio would have paid attention to it, and it might have gotten her a stronger foothold in the industry. instead she used up all of "212" to get a record deal and then basically had to start from scratch.

i doubt it would have materially changed her career but it's an interesting thought exercise perhaps.

i don't really see why the us is even part of this argument

'212' went euro top 20, in a market with no quaint commercial/hipster polar binary where breaking the ice was the hardest part - she and the label p much had a free run at printing money and they blew it

At Hot 97, Banks said that label executives spent 2 million dollars on her album, but "were very specific about wanting something they could play in Top 40" as a return on that investment. But there is no clear slot for a petite, densely lyrical female from Harlem rapping over '90s deep house on today's Top 40, and Banks wasn't interested in becoming anything else.

oh word?

petite, densely lyrical female is like the phrase will self used

After 45 minutes in her presence, alternately infuriated, charmed and deeply impressed, I told her: "You're going to be huge – but probably first you should consider being normal size."

She is indeed a rearview-mirror dingle-dangle of a woman, but her ego is huge. She's also extremely beautiful, yet she's no ingénue: she attended the LaGuardia performing arts school and cut her teeth early doing musical theatre with the Tada! Youth Theater. When, in the course of our talk, she burst spontaneously into song, I almost swooned at the coloratura and melodic purity of her voice.

I know a whole bunch of IRL Banks fans, but they aren't str8 hiphop head dudes so they might as well not exist to deej

We're not talking about who I know, I know irl banks fans too. But Seattle =\= the u.s. any more than bushwick does

can I ask you to restate that point just for clarity's sake, like what exactly are you asserting re Seattle

Wait is the rev no longer living in Seattle

he was in Portland for a while, another non-U.S. city

true

this entire argument is subsidiary, Why Banks Flopped is hardly a mystery but neither is it exactly the point. must say i find it odd that deej boosts so many non-charting rappers because "regional popularity" but is so insistent that non-charting makes azealia banks entirely without merit

tbh everything about this latest argument is about iggy azalea, and banks is just getting praised because she was the one who explicitly said what everyone was thinking

Now in ninety-one we got a new brand, a new band
Lookin' like the same old Klan
Same old thieves that skeez so we gotta make sure
That real rap has got to endure

this entire argument is subsidiary, Why Banks Flopped is hardly a mystery but neither is it exactly the point. must say i find it odd that deej boosts so many non-charting rappers because "regional popularity" but is so insistent that non-charting makes azealia banks entirely without merit

― lex pretend, Wednesday, December 24, 2014 3:13 AM (13 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

yr conflating two independent concerns. one is my ambivalence towards her music, which isn't particularly related to why i think she doesn't really have a shot at broad success w/out a hit record ... u.s. is based on regional markets & she has none. she instead appeals to linked chains of cosmopolitan trendy ppl. a top 40 single (a la "Fancy") would enable her to bypass the need for the former but she now says she's uninterested in such things bc she is a ~creative~. Which is fair, and her prerogative! But lunging for top 40 is what iggy did that made her pop off like she has

Her fanbase is primarily queer so of course it's going to be cosmopolitan-based rather than regional. Also I'm completely over straight dudes dismissing queer aesthetics as hipsterism. Still none of this has anything to do with the point.

deej do you live in a world where regional charts have anywhere near the variation / diversity /impact they had prior to the Telecommunications Act of 1996? must be rad

What regional charts ? Who's talking about charts?

Her fanbase is primarily queer so of course it's going to be cosmopolitan-based rather than regional. Also I'm completely over straight dudes dismissing queer aesthetics as hipsterism. Still none of this has anything to do with the point.

― Dej & the Fommly Loaf (The Reverend), Wednesday, December 24, 2014 6:58 PM (20 minutes ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

... Dog you know my taste better than this.

And there are obviously queer aesthetics that are very mainstream friendly and those which are not. I think you're being overly reductive of queer aesthetics if you think that's my argument here

on the one hand I'd like to heard you bear out "u.s. is based on regional markets" a little more

OTOH you've opened up multiple fronts here so I'm just going to make some popcorn.gif

im speaking of rap specifically but i think its p self evident, you have artists make it big in a local market which primes the artist for the big time bc their music is already at some level 'audience tested' by a community w wide swaths of taste as opposed to a self-selected community of like minds

Still none of this has anything to do with the point.

― Dej & the Fommly Loaf (The Reverend), Thursday, December 25, 2014 12:58 AM (8 hours ago) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i don't see how banks' commercial appeal or lack of is being used to distract from or dismiss her point, the reason she's being praised, which is not that much to do with her

i wish we could stop acting like only artists who make it to the "big time" are relevant

who is dismissing banks' point? who is saying only artists who make it to the big time are relevant? idek

you have artists make it big in a local market which primes the artist for the big time bc their music is already at some level 'audience tested' by a community w wide swaths of taste as opposed to a self-selected community of like minds

yeah this has been a music biz strategy for generations for sure, but it's generally been reliant on regional radio - the internet has massively reduced the need for regional success prior to blowing up

just imo I guess. I don't really think you need a regional "I'm big here" in any genre to get on, not in this day & age

I know managers care a lot less about one's local picture than they did a decade ago. it's still a thing, but

it's not just the internet that has "reduced the need for regional success" - the one-size-fits-all programming strategies of the companies that own radio stations has helped eradicate it

https://medium.com/cuepoint/robert-christgau-expert-witness-c691650fc17b

Is dude still getting checks from Microsoft or did he use bing as a verb out of habit? Genuine preference?

72 year old man writing about azealia banks' "genitalia" ...... nice

Sometimes gossip can be so enlightening. The reflective opener “All Things Go” is pretty solid on its own. But word that this particular best rapper alive just ended a 12-year relationship with her homeboy boyfriend

did he mean to write "black" here or...

I think you know the answer to that.

i thought deans were starting to clamp down on grade inflation nowadays

i mean he's clearly trying to denote that he's the New York guy she was with since before she got famous but it's definitely phrased very awkwardly

who is dismissing banks' point? who is saying only artists who make it to the big time are relevant? idek

you're the one who took banks' recent interview as a jumping off point to make the entire conversation about her commercial viability