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March 31, 2015 Prachi Gupta

Harlem rapper Azealia Banks has released a new music video for “Ice Princess” off her debut album Broke With Expensive Taste. The video is not as technologically immersive as “Wallace,” the interactive Google Chrome-powered single that Banks put out a few weeks ago, but it nonetheless tech-heavy; reliant upon CGI and trippy, psychedelic animations. As […]

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May 16, 2013 Andy Cush

Each week in Sample Wars, we’ll pit two songs which sample the same source material head-to-head against each other, to determine which one rocked the sample better. This week’s Sample Wars pits two generations of NYC-bred rappers against each other: Jay-Z and Azealia Banks. Jay’s “Lucifer,” produced by Kanye West, heavily samples Max Romeo’s roots reggae […]

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April 16, 2013 Andy Cush

After a long string of “faggots” and misguided beefs, here’s a welcome reminder of why you cared about Azealia Banks in the first place. Over a throbbing, snare-heavy track from Lil Internet, Azealia delivers her characteristically slippery verses in a flat monotone before hitting a cathartic distorted yell for the hook. And the video–oh, the […]

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February 14, 2013 Samer Kalaf

The Harlem Shake craze is almost at its apex, but now Harlem’s Azealia Banks has chosen to join in and rap over Baauer’s track while the meme’s still hot. Listen below. Update: The SoundCloud link has stopped functioning, but here’s a YouTube rip. Update #2: The YouTube video’s down now, so uh, sorry. (Photo: Serjao […]

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January 4, 2013 Andy Cush

This is what rap beef looks like in the social media age: formerly friendly-seeming MCs exchange not-so-friendly words on Twitter, a track is dropped, another track is dropped, and another track is dropped, all in the scope of about 24 hours. “Shut the Fuck Up” is the latest from Angel Haze, and the hasty construction […]

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Andy Cush

The fastest-escalating rap beef of all time continues today, with the release of Azealia Banks’ “No Problems,” in response to Angel Haze’s “On the Edge.” On first listen, Angel wins handily. Azealia basically dropped a boilerplate Azealia song–all ravey siren synths and stuttering triplet flows–which, removed from the context of this Twitter-fueled feud, probably wouldn’t even […]

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January 3, 2013 Andy Cush

The Great Azealia Banks/Angel Haze Twitter War of 2013, which no one quite understands but appears to have started today over a seemingly innocuous tweet from Banks, has already produced its first diss track: Angel’s fiery, hilarious “On the Edge.” For a song that must have been banged out in hours or less, this thing […]

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