And Finally Artist News Beef Of The Week

CMU Beef Of The Week #314: Azealia Banks v Taylor Swift, maybe

By | Published on Friday 15 July 2016

Azealia Banks

Urgh, am I going to have to write about Calvin Harris’s Twitter-spatting with ex-girlfriend Taylor Swift in this week’s Beef Of The Week column? Well, that sounds all kinds of tedious.

Wait, what’s that? Azealia Banks has been dissing Taylor Swift on Facebook? And Lady Gaga? And all and any of her detractors? And all of this in the third person? Well, get that Beef Of The Week trophy all shined up and straight in the post.

“FUN FACT”, says a post on Azealia Banks’ Facebook page, “‘SLAY-Z’ is a nickname given to Azealia Banks by one of her fans in 2014. A play on the Z in Banks’ name, and her propensity to release consistently awesome music, the nickname was lifted from her Twitter account and featured as one of the characters in Taylor Swift’s ‘Bad Blood’ video. Azealia Banks reclaimed the nickname upon the arrival of her self-released 2016 mixtape titled ‘SLAY-Z'”.

That was a diss aimed at Taylor Swift, right?

“FUN FACT”, starts another post. “Azealia Banks created her own genre of music called ‘Witch-Hop’. Coined by the success of 2012’s ‘Fantasea’ mixtape, Azealia considers her music to be inspired by the invisible world. Three days after ‘Witch-Hop’ was declared by Azealia Banks to be a legitimate genre, Lady Gaga (also a fan of Azealia Banks) suspiciously titled her then upcoming studio album, ‘Artpop'”.

That was a diss aimed at Lady Gaga, right?

“Azealia Banks is the most widely criticised and widely ignored artist of all time”, says yet another post. “While her equally controversial male peers are given an excess of room and public forgiveness to express themselves (be it through drug trafficking, gun violence, misogyny, domestic violence, homophobia etc), Azealia Banks has been demonised by the public at large for simply… tweeting. Opponents of Banks often cite her ‘bad attitude’ as the reason for their avid disdain towards her”.

That was a diss aimed at all detractors, right?

“As evidenced by the excess of meta-data tagged to search query: ‘AZEALIA BANKS'”, the post goes on, “Azealia’s opponents have single-handedly contributed to a global, real time exposure of her personal agenda(s) via the cyber world. Azealia’s agenda is rooted in her metaphysical philosophies of duality, gender dynamics, race, time, space, and individuality. All while welcoming cognitive dissonance with open arms, Azealia Banks has an extreme penchant for exploring ‘nonsense’ and ‘non-sense’ as ways to solve problems”.

No, I’ve no idea what that’s about. But hey, she didn’t use any racist slurs and I didn’t have to write about Calvin Harris. Double win.



READ MORE ABOUT: | |