Azealia Banks’ long-delayed album Broke With Expensive Taste finally came out last week after a three-year wait, which is like 300 rapper years. During that time, another Azalea ascended (Iggy) and Banks went from one of the most promising new faces to a punchline better known for maniacally tweeting slurs than releasing music.
Banks is still a reckless, confrontation user of social media. But as of November 6, when she surprise-released her album, she’s a aggressive tweeter who makes reckless, confrontational, good music.
And Broke With Expensive Taste is very good. She raps with a fast, natural flow. She sneers. There are almost no featured artists; Banks sings her own hooks and does it well. She switches to Spanish halfway through “Gimme A Chance”. She put a collaboration with Ariel Pink called “Nude Peach a Go-Go” on there.
With this album, no one can say she doesn’t have the goods to back up her bluster. (Also, she told Lana del Ray to tell Eminem to “to go back to his trailer park and eat his microwave hotpocket dinner and suck on his sisters tiddies” on Twitter after Eminem rapped about punching del Ray, so sometimes her pugnaciousness is righteous as well as entertaining.)
Here’s the video for “212”, the track that put her on the map. This is a weird, rare instance where a single from an album released in late 2014 had a music video come out in 2011. It’s old, but the ecstatic staccato taunt of a song has held up well:
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