Posted on by Matt Thomas

The Most Insane People of All Time (aka You’re Outta Control!): #4 Azalia Banks

I just wanna sip the punch with your peeps and
Sit in that lunch if you’re treatin’

— Azealia Banks, “212”

I. Introduction

In my opinion, Azealia Banks is the greatest rapper of all time.

I do not say this lightly.

These days, I don’t listen to much rap and hip-hop. I regret this a bit. However, life is short, there is a lot to do, and there is simply too much music to listen to. I am familiar with and enjoy a number of hip-hop artists, mostly from the late 1980s and 1990s: LL Cool J, Sir Mix-a-Lot, Wu-Tang Clan, KRS-One and A Tribe Called Quest, among others. I especially like A Tribe Called Quest’s “I Left My Wallet in El Segundo.”

Of course you did, dude. You went to El Segundo. You lost your fucking wallet. Naturally.

I also enjoy the more jazz-inflected end of the genre: De La Soul, Digable Planets and Basehead. Among later artists, I know Nas, Kendrick Lamar and Kanye West to varying degrees. Kanye is, of course, completely outta control. I do not believe I am alone at this point in saying that I do not care for Kanye West as a person. His flirtation with Nazi imagery and rhetoric is indefensible. Nevertheless, Kanye is certainly a talented artist, and I do like—or at least once liked—My Beautiful Dark Twisted Fantasy. Its lyrical density and imagination are something to behold.

However other than Azealia, my favorite rap group remains Public Enemy.

Public Enemy arrived when hip-hop was still a relatively young genre, and pushed it into territory that was denser, louder, angrier, more political and, to my ears anyway, considerably more interesting. I respect N.W.A. and their place in the tradition. I like “Fuck tha Police” well enough. Ice Cube obviously went on to enormous fame and fortune, and Eazy-E had a tough life. RIP. Nonetheless, for my money, Public Enemy is the more important and enjoyable group. “911 Is a Joke” is great. “Welcome to the Terrordome” is my favorite Public Enemy song. Terradome rules.

So I guess at the end of the day I do regard Chuck D as the greatest rap/hip-hop lyricist of all time. However, these days I don’t find myself listening to Public Enemy all that often. “212,” on the other hand, I listen to regularly.

And baby, here we go.

212

It only makes sense to start with “212.”

Azealia Banks released “212” in 2011, when she was twenty years old. It subsequently appeared on her four-song 1991 EP in 2012 and, eventually, on her debut album Broke with Expensive Taste in 2014. 

“212” is stuffed with the most amazing collection of rhymes, near-rhymes, internal rhymes and alliteration I have ever heard. I understand that hip-hop and rap lyrics depend on these techniques and that plenty of rappers have demonstrated extraordinary mastery of them.

Azealia, in my opinion, takes the whole thing to another level.

My favorite line in the song, by far, is not even one of the blue lines:

I just wanna sip that punch with your peeps and / Sit in that lunch if you’re treatin’

I love this line so very much, primarily because it establishes Azealia’s modus operandi when it comes to her business and career.

Azealia is on the come-up. She’s going places. She has designs on the crown. The girl has talent for days, and the industry is listening. But the second half is arguably even more essential to understanding how Azealia works.

She wants to sit in that lunch if you’re treatin’. Then or now, Azealia Banks is the last person who is ever going to pay for lunch.

This, incidentally, makes the eventual title Broke with Expensive Taste almost impossibly perfect.

And then we get this:

I’m the one today / I’m the new shit, boo / Young Rapunzel / Who are you, bitch? New lunch?

Followed, repeatedly, by this immortal threat:

I’ma ruin you, cunt.

Of course you are, Azealia. Of course you are.

The funny thing is that these lines would prove somewhat prophetic.

Azealia clearly thought she was the shit.

I agree.

“212” was an extraordinary announcement of a young artist who seemed capable of doing almost anything. Contemporary critics heard it too. When Pitchfork reviewed 1991 the following year, the publication was already emphasizing the slyness beneath Banks’s aggression and the enormous expectations surrounding her. 

And then Azealia started ruining people. For real.

I’ma Ruin You Cunt

Azealia Banks has been involved in so many public feuds that trying to compile a complete list would require an entirely separate essay.

This is not that essay. Instead we will take a few representative samples.

There was Zayn Malik. In 2016 Banks accused the former One Direction singer of copying her aesthetic. That dispute escalated into an extraordinarily ugly series of racist and homophobic attacks from Banks. Then the fourteen-year-old Disney actress Skai Jackson made the apparently catastrophic decision to tell Azealia to simmer down.

Baby no.

You do not tell Azealia Banks to simmer down. No one does. Azaalia does not settle. Period.

Banks promptly opened another front, this time against a fourteen-year-old girl. Sure babes, why not. Ruis her too. Just because. Twitter suspended her account, and a UK festival subsequently dropped her from its lineup. This is one of the places where we can move beyond speculation about whether Azealia’s behavior damaged her career. Here it plainly did. 

And then there was Grimes.

Oh my God. Baby take an aspirin. Now.

In 2018 Banks went to Los Angeles expecting to collaborate with Grimes and ended up at the house Grimes shared with Elon Musk. The proposed musical collaboration went nowhere. Obviously. Banks hung around for a bit and then things got weird. Real weird.

Banks began posting about the experience publicly, describing her time with Grimes and Elon as bizarre and increasingly hostile terms and making allegations about Musk and drug use. Musk denied the drug allegation. But somehow an aborted Azealia Banks/ Grimes recording session had become entangled with Musk’s already notorious “funding secured” Tesla tweet and the securities controversy surrounding it.

That’s the thing about Azealia.

She can start out trying to make a song with another musician and somehow end up adjacent to a federal securities investigation involving one of the richest men on Earth.

How?

Because she is Azealia Banks baby. And you are not. No other explanation required.

And these were hardly isolated incidents. She feuded with T.I. and Iggy Azalea. She attacked Perez Hilton. Of course. She criticized Pharrell, Baauer and Disclosure. Pitchfork noted as early as 2014 that some of these fights were no longer merely entertaining sideshows: they were costing her potentially valuable collaborators. She was hurting career for no apparent reasons. At all.

Azealia would gun down anybody. She does not give a single shit.

Men. Women. Musicians. Producers. Celebrities. Minor celebrities. People who were minding their own business. People who were very much not minding their own business. Teenagers. Whoever. Whatever. Funk em all Azealia. Fuck em all.

It didn’t matter.

I’ma ruin you, cunt.

And she did.

Broke with Expensive Taste

The tragedy—or comedy, depending on how you look at it—is that through all of this Azealia Banks remained enormously talented.

Her debut album, Broke with Expensive Taste, finally appeared in November 2014 after years of delays and a disastrous relationship with Interscope Records. Banks had gotten herself released from her deal and retained the rights to the recordings. The record finally came out on her terms. More or less. 

And the critics liked it. Quite a lot, actually.

The Guardian described a record luxuriating in sound and language, bouncing around among underground club music, house, garage and stranger territory. Pitchfork heard essentially the same thing: an artist jumping almost recklessly among genres, held together by Banks’s own voice and formidable technical ability. 

I recently listened to Broke with Expensive Taste again and really enjoyed it. Some of it runs a little long for me, but there is great stuff all over the record.

All this complicates the easy story.

It would be simple to say Azealia Banks destroyed her career because she couldn’t stop fighting with people. It would also be wrong.

The record industry contributed plenty to the mess. Her relationship with Interscope was dysfunctional. Banks believed the label simply did not understand the record she wanted to make. There is some evidence that she was right. Broke with Expensive Taste is a strange record. It is difficult to classify. It does not sound particularly interested in behaving like a conventional major-label rap debut.

Indeed, after Banks finally got out of the Interscope arrangement, she told Pitchfork that other labels liked the album but remained wary of her. Banks laughed about her reputation. 

So the record-company story and the Azealia story meet somewhere in the middle.

The industry didn’t know what to do with her. Azealia frequently didn’t know what to do with Azealia. She is, of course, totally outta control at all times.

And nobody knew what the fuck was going on.

The Prophecy

There is one more remarkable thing about “212.”

Amid all the obscenity, comedy, sexual swagger, threats and spectacular displays of technical skill, Banks suddenly turns the camera around.

She warns herself:

Why are you procrastinating? You have all this talent. Baby you’re wasting it. People are going to forget you, and when they do, ultimately you’ll have yourself to blame.

TIME noticed the eerie quality of this almost immediately when Broke with Expensive Taste finally appeared in 2014. What had sounded in 2011 like the self-motivation of an extraordinarily ambitious young artist three years later sounded like prophecy. 

That strikes me as much more interesting than another catalogue of Azealia Banks saying outrageous shit on the internet.

Because the talent is real. The promise is real. The record is real.

And this is why Azealia Banks drives me so nuts.

I don’t particularly care that she’s badly behaved. Plenty of great artists are badly behaved.

I care because she’s so fucking talented.

“212” remains an astonishing piece of writing. To me, the song feels as fresh today as it did when it was released. The rhymes and internal rhymes are off the hook. The alliteration is just nuts. The profanity is dialed to 11. And the song makes me crack up every single time I hear it.

Brother just listen to what this woman could do.

Baby told us in 2011.

I’ma ruin you, cunt.

Shut the fuck up Azealia. But I will say this: you certainly ruined a lot of people along the way.

But nobody ever did more damage to Azealia Banks than Azealia Banks.

Dedication:

For Azealia Banks. Baby, you’re completely out of all reasonable and rational control. And that’s why I love you so very, very much. Baby.

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Scenes from Hamilton College III: Sophomore Year I (with cameos from Sonic the Hedgehog, Ani DiFranco, and Candle Time)

Note: In Part I and Part II of this series I wrote about my freshman year at Hamilton. Part III will take up sophomore year where I lived down the hill in Bundy Dorm.

All you ladies and gentlemen
Who made this all so probable

Big Star

After freshman year I returned back to Washington State for the summer. I have written glancingly about this period, suffice it to say I was not up to much. Still broke, I did have a short lived girlfriend but she dumped me mid-summer. I spent a few days moping around playing nerf golf at my parents’ house, then got over it. I don’t remember much else from that summer except that I got back in good running shape, and when I got back to campus in the fall I turned out, once again, for the running team.

One thing I neglected to mention in my pieces on freshman year is that I actually competed on the JV running team at Hamilton for a time and ran a few races. I was not in great shape that year, and JV was not that exciting. As I have written, I had other pursuits. Sophomore year, however, I was in better shape and had a shot at making the top five. The only other runner I recall was called Harry. I thought Harry lived in Sig, but Jake tells me he was in a frat called THX, about which I remember nothing. In any case, Jake knew him. Harry was a hardcore runner and scolded me about my lifestyle, wanting me to devote myself to the team. I was not going to do this, but I was able to run with Harry and the first team for a number of practices. In the long run though it didn’t work out–they ran mornings and afternoons, and my summer shape wasn’t going to carry me through a hyper-competitive season. I was a good runner, but I just didn’t have the drive. Sooner or later I left the team, this time for good. I look back fondly on Harry however–he was right; I was lazy and needed a kick in the rear.

As a sophomore I roomed in a double with John Innes (there were two John’s in my friend group, John Innes and John Slack), in a dorm halfway down the hill to Clinton called Bundy. Marc Campbell was also on our floor. Ian was living in his frat, but spent a lot of time in Bundy as he was dating Ann, someone who I became close with over the year as well. Jake was over at Sig and I didn’t see much of him, mostly for geographic reasons.

Bundy was a way different story than North. First, I spent a lot more time in my dorm room with John Innes. Innes would watch the soap opera Days of Our Lives and insist I watched it too. I could have cared less, but watched it to be a good friend. We also played Sega, almost exclusively Sonic the Hedgehog and Sega Hockey, at which John usually beat me (however not in the biggest matches, as I’ll get to later). Innes liked rap music and had a pretty good collection. I could get into some of the rap; I liked Public Enemy, KRS One, De La Soul, and a minor band called Basehead which wasn’t really rap. However I was by then deep into what would today be described as alternative or indie music, so Innes’ taste and mine mostly diverged. We were both good about sharing airtime though, so he got to know my music and I his.

The record I listened to the most, by far, that year was Big Star Third: Sister Lovers from the then mostly forgotten American band Big Star. I loved this record (which was on Rykodisc), and played it endlessly while trying to advance in Sonic the Hedgehog. I stuck my mattress in the closet and hung a tapestry over the door area so I had a little cubby to sleep in. Overall, the whole scene was much more domestic than the pretty chaotic North.

Other than Marc and John Innes, I don’t remember exactly who the other guys who were on our floor, but I’ve been reminded that John Slack was one of them. Ian and Jake were living in frats, and over the year I got to know a new crew of people, including several girls. These included firstly Jenny and Jen, who lived in the female area on our same floor (maybe the second floor? Innes will remember). Innes and I became very close to Jenny and Jen, and spent almost every evening hanging out in their room doing something called “Candle Time.” Candle Time was pretty much exactly what it sounds like–we would turn down the lights, light candles (which was probably against school rules) and talk for hours. We would talk about our days, people and goings on in the dorm, and just life in general. It was really wholesome and again, a major change from North.

Candle Time lasted, in my recollection, for a number of months, but not all through the year. Despite spending so much time together, there was no romantic involvement, although I believe Innes and Jen did get together later, and briefly; I’m not really sure. I think it was supposed by some that I myself had a crush on Jen; however although I liked her a lot this was not the case. I did have a little bit of a crush on Jenny, but she had other people who were interested in her and we all hung out so nothing ever happened. That was fine–it was actually really nice to just have close female friends with no expectations.

Jenny and Jen were both from the upstate New York area, broader Rochester as I recall. My guess is they came from relatively less money than many of our classmates, who came from preppier areas, and schools. I actually visited Jenny’s house once or twice, and I think a bunch of us slept over once and watched the film Glengarry Glen Ross. These included Amy Holland, who was one of the coolest chicks around. She was called “Red,” on account of her red hair, and was totally my speed. Everyone else fell asleep during the movie except Amy and I and as I recall she loved what is, to be fair, a pretty stereotypically male film.

Jenny’s house was nice, but seemed pretty middle-class and maybe that’s part of why we all bonded–the richer kids, although I obviously hung around with them a lot, had their own life ways to some extent. I remember one evening Jenny and I went to see the band The New Dylans on campus. I thought they were a good band, and had found their cassette at the campus radio station where John Innes and I had a sports talk show. Their record has a song I liked called “The Prodigal Son Returns Today.” They sounded kind of like a minor league Big Head Todd and the Monsters or something, and are kind of dated today if I’m honest, but I was excited for the show. At first it was pretty full, but people left little by little and by the end it was just me and Jenny. The band played their hearts out for the two of us, including encores! After the show, I joined them for a cigarette outside and chatted. I told them that I really liked the show and they said thanks and all with no mention of the fact that the venue was totally empty. That’s professionalism, I thought, and I imagined that as a band trying to break through playing small colleges and sending cassettes to radio stations they’d had their share of ups and downs. I doubt they are still around, but if so I’m rooting for you guys!

A bigger star that played Hamilton was Ani DiFranco. I saw Ani several times, both on campus and off, as she was pretty huge in New York State at the time. She had not yet released “Dilate,” which came in 1996 and was her mainstream breakthrough to the extent she ever had one, but she was a star on campus, mostly with the women but with a lot of the guys too. Ani put on a great show, and I totally got the appeal. She was kind of the Jeff Rosenstock of the day I suppose.

Shawn Colvin also came, and I knew some of the people who were assigned to take care of her backstage. They reported that she was a total asshole, asked for coke, and generally threw her weight around big time. Shawn Colvin was OK, but no so great that she could act like a diva I don’t think. Full on divas are acceptable-like Joni Mitchell might be a diva and what are you going to do–but minor league divas pretty much suck.

Anyway, like I say over the year although we still saw each other, I saw less of Jenny and Jen, and more of other people like Ann, Amy, and Matt Thornton. I’m not sure where Matt lived, maybe Bundy and maybe not, and I don’t recall either how or when I met him, but we soon became fast friends. Matt was full speed ahead, and argumentative, but I can handle my own in an argument, and I really liked him. Matt ran with an interesting group of friends, including several Asian-Americans who I believe lived on the Kirkland side of campus. Hamilton used to be a guys’ school and Kirkland was the attached girls’ school. Then at some point they merged, but the Kirkland side and the old Hamilton side always felt distinct to me and were separated by a bridge.

One time we were talking about going to New York and Matt told me about some clubs for Asians that he was interested in. Matt’s friends told him that he (or I) could not go to these clubs because we would get the shit kicked out of us. Had to be at least half-Asian apparently. But I think Matt went to these kinds of clubs anyway and did not get beat up, because he just sort of rolled that way.

Matt and I and Ian did go to New York eventually, and spent a few days uptown at some person’s apartment where I commandeered a prime sleeping space and we ordered pizza three times a day. I believe this was actually after graduation, as Matt transferred before graduating from Hamilton.

As I mentioned in an earlier piece, this was also the year Ian and I went to Boston to see music shows. We went with a fellow called Cale who was a freshman. Cale was cool, and also we liked him because of his name, reminiscent of John Cale, violist for the Velvet Underground who Ian and I were both fans of. With Ian and Cale I felt like I was in good company–we were all very simpatico.

My academic performance sophomore year was just OK. I took more English classes, and also started to take some History classes including some Asian History with Tom Wilson. Tom Wilson was a good professor, but I think he was one of those guys who really saw himself at U. Chicago or Yale or something. A lot of academics are like that. Nevertheless, Tom was good–tough but fair–and pushed me to really deepen my research abilities. Outside of Tom’s class, my effort was a little mixed, and during the dead of winter I skipped some morning classes because the climb up the hill was just too tough. The winters in upstate New York are pretty brutal, and I preferred to stay local down in Bundy a lot of the time.

One more thing I remember from this year is starting, and then dropping, photography class. I had an old camera that barely worked, and was interested in learning how to develop film in a darkroom. However, photography class was really expensive because we had to regularly buy these huge rolls of film which cost like $50 at the school store. A classmate I’ll call C. to protect his identity told me, “just tuck your pants into your socks and drop the film down your pants and walk out. That’s what I do.” But I wasn’t going to steal film all year and there was no way I could pay the outrageous costs. On top of that, I wasn’t all that good–certainly my classmates outclassed me, crappy camera or not. So I dropped it after six weeks or so; however now that I think about it I may well have met Matt Thornton in that exact class. It’s a possibility.

Note: That will do it for Part III. In Part IV I’ll write more about my friendship with Ann as well as the Sports Talk Show we did on the Hamilton radio station.

Dedication: For the whole Bundy dorm, actually. It was a pretty chill year.

to be continued…