Hipsters

If you’re one of the people who regularly emails me to tell me to stop swearing, this essay is not for you.

CUNT. That was the word displayed on the cigarette lighter on my desk in the summer of 2012. I think someone at XL recordings sent them to the NME office, even though the artist technically wasn’t signed at the time. I have never smoked cigarettes, but I have always carried a light. When Azealia Banks released “212”, it was genuinely incredible. And not just for the use of the C word. Although I’m not sure anyone who has ever been in a recording booth has uttered that expletive with as much of an appetite as a then 19-year-old rapper from Harlem. “I guess that c*** getting eaten” was the provocation on a three-minute self-released instant anthem that was rave-ready and genre-changing. ‘212’ was as much of a conversation-starter as it was a total shutdown. It was staggering.

I’d say that hearing that demo was probably Top 3 most exciting moments working inside a music magazine. I remember the first time I heard ‘Elephant’ by Tame Impala, and ‘Video Games’ by Lana Del Rey, and ‘Peso’ by A$AP Rocky, and ‘Dog Days Are Over’ by Florence & The Machine. I remember the first time I heard Disclosure’s ‘Latch’. But Azealia Banks was a tornado. Who comes out of the gates like that, a total dominatrix? By the end of the track you understand that Banks is challenging you to impress her but she absolutely did not come to make friends.

“I’m the new shit boo, Yung Rapunzel
Who are you bitch, new lunch?
I’ma ruin you cunt.”

In 2011, during NME’s last ever annual Cool List issue (we decided to retire it the following year), Banks topped the lot. She was instantaneously adored. And feared. In fact, all I remember from the first few years of her career was constant talk about how unmanageable she was. At some point in 2012 I think, I went to a rave under the Old Vic tunnels in London and Banks came out to do a live PA at around 1am, just to perform ‘212’. I was there alone with what felt like one million people (probably just a squashed thousand or so) all as exhilarated as each other. It was maybe one of the coolest most zeitgeist moments I’ve ever breathed into my lungs.

Around that same time she was premiering her “Mermaid Ball Tour” at the London Aquarium and I went to report on it, and so did the sharks. I mean they didn’t really have a choice. Eighteen months after ‘212’ dropped, however, we still didn’t have her much-anticipated debut album Broke With Expensive Taste, and lo and behold little old me decided to commission myself the opinion page one week in the NME, in which I lambasted Banks for spending more time starting online beefs with people (long list included: Perez Hilton, Rita Ora, Iggy Azalea, Lil’ Kim, Nicki Minaj, former managers, The Stone Roses - who she wished “excrement and death” upon - and The Media) than she was spending making the album we wouldn’t wait forever for. I wrote the following, quoting her lyrics back at her:

With ‘212’, Azealia Banks made her own rod for her very own back (“Bitch the end of your lives are near/This shit be mine mine”). She announced herself as a radical, whose manifesto was to conquer the planet with raw talent. And yet, instead, she spends her life as a virtual Napoleon, building a career on wars.

If I met Azealia now, I’d give her a taste of her own medicine. I’d say, Ayo! I heard you’re riding with the same tall, tall tale (ie, that you’re making an album). Telling them you made some (ie, songs for the album), saying you’re grinding but you ain’t going nowhere (ie, where’s the album?). WHY PROCRASTINATE GIRL? You got a lot, but you just waste all yourself (ie, get off Twitter and do the album). And they’ll forget your name soon. Won’t nobody be to blame but yourself… Sound familiar, Banks?

Anyway, Banks responded to that.

—

So fast-forward 13 years and Azealia Banks is the best political pundit we got. “I am a Zionist” she tweeted earlier this month. Followed by “The area is called JUDEA for a reason. Hello, wake the tea up.” Followed by “Jews aren’t colonisers. Only Christians and Arabs colonise.”

“No black person should be supporting Palestine,” she says. “Whenever I see stupid ass musicians supporting Palestine blindly without raising the question about black people’s safety and the ongoing *industry* of CHATTEL SLAVERY enslavement of black peoples in the Islamic world, it makes my blood BOIL.”

It’s like… if Kanye West was brilliant. These tweets below are just since socialist Jihadist misogynist college encampment posterboy Zohran Mamdani won the Mayoral primary in New York City not even 24 hours ago:

Jew fatigue compounded by Black fatigue compounded by women fatigue. Girl, I am just grateful for your existence.

It gets better. She calls out the hypocrisy of BDS. Not just that, she’s BDS-ing BDS before they get a chance. Yesterday she said she refused to say “Free Palestine” after pressure from her industry and the result was that she went ahead and called off her own gigs at two festivals – Boomtown and Maiden Voyage – before they could pull her from the lineup. “I won’t say free Palestine and I’m not dealing with the threats and I’m not putting on a fucking hijab.”

She went on, of course: “They are a fucking cult. BDS does a lot of fundraising and where does that money even go? It is freeing to let that shit go. I’m fucking Azealia Banks it is a pleasure and an honor to have me on your line up. Not the other way around. Those stupid ass promoters are going to keep kowtowing to internet trolls and fuck themselves out of relevance, and when the asset management funds decide to divest because they wouldn’t stand firm and hold their ground they will fucking learn.” I mean, where is the lie??

She calls out the hypocrisy of openly criticizing Jews but hiding behind the Islamophobia canard when Muslim extremism is allowed to fly free.

Azealia Banks understands why Cuomo needed to win this primary and not Mamdani who she describes as “such a bad actor. He and Cenk from young Turks both have that failed act-white trapped by one’s own habibiness Hollywood reject shit.” Trapped by one’s own habibiness?! I’m obsessed.

I spent the last few hours going through Banks’ entire Twitter feed and I beseech someone to get her to write the national curriculum for young American high school students asap, please.

This week Tablet Magazine awarded her with a Sinai Award at their annual gala. Here she is with our friends and peers Debra Messing and Jake Cohen. Yes, really. And yes that is what she did not wear:

The thing is, Azealia Banks is an extraordinary talent. She was from the moment she emerged. She is the quintessential example of a voice that refuses to be dictated to, manufactured, primed or limited. She doesn’t need anybody to make her great. She’s not a hipster.

I’ve been lamenting the success of New York Democrat mayoral candidate Mamdani in his primary yesterday. A Jihadist who supports the intifada, who is friends with Hasan Piker, Mohammad El-Kurd and Mehdi Hassan, who supports defunding the police in a city where the Jewish people are the most targeted minority. Mamdani is a socialist disaster. The result of what would happen if a child from the Columbia college encampments won the race to be mayor of one of the greatest cities in the world. This happened in the UK. It was called: Jeremy Corbyn.

How did he get there? He ran a campaign that spoke to Gen Z, and spoke to the popstars and actors and writers and “influencers” who speak to Gen Z. They helped him win. That’s what makes me sad. What makes me sad is that artists don’t have the confidence to let their work speak for itself any more. They can’t just rely on the brilliance of their voice, of their performance, of their inherent talent. They have to jump on an ideological bandwagon that they don’t understand, and promote utopian views that have no place in a true functioning society. It’s cowardice. And it’s not art. It’s con art. Lassoing themselves onto other people’s wars just to be relevant?

If you’re a writer, write.
If you’re a singer, sing.
If you’re an actor, act.
If you’re a muse, be a motherfucking muse.

I lament that art has become an exclusive club. That there is no room for a person who doesn’t comply with the extremism being presented by the hipster wokes and their fake cancellations. They have no idea what it is to be blacklisted. They suppress any voice or presence who doesn’t agree. What kind of an artist is that? What kind of a thinker diminishes their own opportunity to be challenged by closing the room? It’s weak. It’s disappointing. It’s shameful.

Once upon a time, I wrote about music. Once upon a time, I ran music magazines. Once upon a time, I wrote about Azealia Banks as a rapper. Once upon a time, people begged me to go to their show. Now I’m told not to show up. Yah, no, Eve. You just can’t come Eve. I don’t think there’s space Eve. Worse - the non response.

No guest list. No access. No interview. No byline. No art. No conversation.

We’re seeing the results now. If you can’t say it in art, where can you?

Thank you, Azealia Banks. Sorry I was once impatient about your album release. You’ve been worth the wait.