As I entered the O2 Academy in Oxford last Saturday, something felt strange. The air was thick, the bar was crowded and the DJ was already playing in anticipation of the headline act. It all seemed perfectly normal. Yet, something was amiss.
And then my friend turned round to me; her face pale, a mildly disturbed look in her eye.
‘Why is everyone here aged 12?’
Oh, yes.
While 12 is possibly a slight exaggeration, it was clear that a substantial portion of the audience at Azealia Banks’s seventh UK show in her 2012 Fantasea tour were teenage girls, all dressed in Banks’s signature style: wool hats, cut-off shorts, dark lipstick. In many ways, it made perfect sense. Azealia Banks, who exploded on to the music scene in 2011 with her single ‘212’, is as much a brand as an artist. It is easy to see why her self-consciously controversial lyrics, brash confidence and distressed-cartoon style would endear her to a gaggle of 14-year-old girls. At the same time, her distinct energy and creativity as an artist and her eschewing the increasingly fashionable ‘trap’ genre of her rap contemporaries, in favour of slick 1980s and 90s house-oriented style, has put her on the map for a more serious musical crowd.
So who exactly is Azealia Banks? The 21-year-old rapper grew up in Harlem and, after leaving stage school, chose to pursue a music career. Adopting the name ‘Miss Bank$’, she released her first recording in 2009 and slowly began to get recognised by niche music producers such as Lunice (with whom she collaborated on her track ‘Running’) and Machinedrum. And then, in 2011, Banks erupted into the mainstream through YouTube, when her first single ‘212’ went viral.
The rest is, of course, history. Banks, now signed with Interscope/Polydor, has become famous worldwide, her name synonymous with ‘cool’ after being nominated for the BBC’s Sound of 2012 and topping NME’s ‘Cool List’ in 2011. While people draw similarities between her and fellow female rapper Nicki Minaj, Banks exudes a very different sexuality to Minaj; a more organic, kitsch brand of erotic. Her foul mouth is accompanied by a mischievous smile and pigtails. At the same time, Banks has expressed her appreciation for Minaj’s ‘comic’ ability not to take herself too seriously. This tongue-in cheek approach is something that Banks also strives to adopt and which certainly comes through when watching her perform.
Back in Oxford, appearing on stage with long blue hair spilling over a sequined bikini top, Banks cuts a surreal figure. Perhaps this is unsurprising given that she is on a UK tour promoting her new mixtape Fantasea — the cover of which depicts her as a blue-haired mermaid. Beginning the show with her own take of The Prodigy’s ‘Out of Space’, Banks moves on to perform some of her most popular tracks, including ‘Jumanji’ and ‘1991’. Although her stature is slight, her stage presence, perhaps helped by her theatre school education, is a compelling one and she has the crowd captivated from the moment she appears. ‘This is the song you probably all associate with “Azealia Banks”!’ she announces before launching into ‘Liquorice’; words that give away an intense awareness of public perception of her identity. A natural entertainer, Banks’s raw energy is infectious and by the time she starts the familiar bouncing house rhythm of ‘212’, the crowd is in a state of frenzy, singing along to her every word.
The reaction to ‘212’ raises the question of whether Azealia Banks is a ‘one-hit wonder’. After ‘212’, she has yet to release a track that has the same impact. There is also a danger that her distinctiveness will lead to a cycle of similar songs, all bearing her hallmark sound, but which are not definitive in themselves. We can only await her album and next single to find out. One thing is for certain, though — her charisma and talent as both a performer and an artist make her a formidable presence in the industry at the moment. And quite apart from her music, her following of teenage doppelgängers suggests that Azealia Banks ‘the brand’ is only going from strength to strength.
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