Member Since: 1/1/2014
Posts: 292
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I have a problem, guys…  I meant to write a quick review of HM&R in the atrlcritic thread per Maiko's recommendation and ended up with this:
Quote:
Originally posted by ruefle
“I be looking very heavy metal and reflective.” A heck of a line to build a song around.
Give it to twenty of the better emcees in the game right now, and hopefully they could each come up with one or two lines similar in rhyme and rhythm. The cream of the crop could perhaps produce a half-dozen. Azealia, on the other hand, spits nothing but this intricate flow (with little cheating—and even the cheats [the Gollum-esque "breasts-es" and "Moëts-es"] are their own delight) for an entire track. And make no mistake that it brings about some of her best lyrics in ages.
While many would care to pretend that 2014 Azealia Banks is not the same person behind the acclaimed 1991 EP, you can rest assured she is. She knows how to produce effortless bops brimming over with subtleties and smooth transitions and quotable quips. But that shot of her flipping off the camera from the back of her motorcycle, seen in a snippet from the forthcoming HM&R video? That wasn't just directed at Interscope and Polydor—that's a warning shot fired across the bow of all the bandwagoners ready to hop on her #kunt again now that she's releasing new music. To paraphrase a recent post on ATRL: if you don't like Azealia at her “Yung Rapunxel” and “Count Contessa,” you don't deserve her at her “Liquorice.”
Let's talk about those two 2013 tracks… People wanted a follow-up to 212? Pretty AB teased just that before proceeding to launch into the screamo YR hook that drove casual listeners away in herds. Lovers of Fantasea wanted more breezy poolside bops? Azealia dropped a cut from Fantasea II that was bewildering in its monotony and strange telling of “the d*ke who won the fist fight with Muscle Mike.” To put it bluntly, Ms. Banks is perhaps the most commercially successful anti-commercial artist out there right now. (And proves it by collabing with musicians like Ariel Pink, known for recording on home equipment to make his music sound as lo-fi as possible.)
In this context, HM&R starts to make a lot more sense. It's the comeback track designed not to lure in long-lost fans but to scare them further away. It's that middle finger to the blogs more interested in misreporting her Twitter beefs than in putting out accurate info about her upcoming releases. She's going to experiment on her own terms, with no need to hold the listener's hand with a soft-peddled hook, a climactic ending, or any sort of Lazy Jay-style breakdown.
What we have instead is in fact a curious blend of YR and CC's best sensibilities: the frenetic witch-hop breakdown of Lil Internet's production, and the lyrical dynamism of CC's—yes—monotony. Zee Zee has some of the most varied flow in the rap game; do you honestly think she doesn't know what's she doing by releasing two minutes and thirty seconds of the same flow delivered in the same low-pitched voice?? More importantly: what does it mean to rap monotonously?
Azealia has expressed a strong interest recently in Lewis Carroll and literary nonsense. Which is to say, if you want her bars to tell a story, she'll make sure it's about a man named Wallace with a Rottweiler's head. If you want lyrics grounded in the reality of daily existence, she'll spit a line that sounds ripped straight out of Alice in Wonderland like “who was fooding this fish?” This isn't the only way to play with listener's expectations of what rap lyrics are, though: there's also the all-important delivery. How will the audience distinguish amongst lines when everything is presented the same way? What elements will stand out from that droning tone, and what others will flow together more seamlessly than was before possible? Without the cues of rise-and-fall and fast-and-slow so typical in the genre, we're thrown quickly off-kilter and into the arms of unexpected new charms.
The flow of HM&R, then, is one of the song's key successes (or keys to success): suddenly, Azealia's stark lyricism ("I be with the pedi in the puddle reminiscing"!!!) is alone in the cold of that throbbing beat and has to be actively wrestled to the ground by the listener through protracted effort. Will it be better as an album track than as a standalone effort? Possibly. Is it peculiar (and telling) that Lil Bambi's follow-up to the Lil Internet-produced lead single was the other Lil Internet-produced track off the album? Assuredly! But rumors of Azealia's death are, unsurprisingly, greatly exaggerated. We should be thrilled she's provided us with such a challenging listening opportunity, and look forward to a Broke with Expensive Taste that I guarantee will be as filled with variety and experimentation as all of the Head Negress's career thus far.
Wanna bet, bitch?
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Imagine how much I'll have to say about BWET? 
P.S. Yes, it's kind of a shameless reposting but this **** took me like 1.5 hours to write and I'd rather have it seen by the actual Kunts in here than the annoying jerks dragging Azealia with little rhyme or reason in that thread…
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let me write a quick review before they punch my baby out.
I swear if not
