Member Since: 8/31/2013
Posts: 20,892
|
Azealia talks Second and Third album
Ezra Koenig about Azealia:
Quote:
"The first time I met Azealia was at a bar in New York with a bunch of music-industry types," says Vampire Weekend frontman Ezra Koenig. "She was responding to a drunk, middle-aged white guy's provocations with 'your mama' jokes. I love her combination of truth, passion and irreverence. You hear it in her music, too."
|
Ilana Glazer and DJ Ebro Darden about Azealia:
Quote:
"Azealia Banks is a prodigy and tortured artist," Broad City actress and Banks fan Ilana Glazer tells Billboard. "It's exciting that one of those actually exists today." Hot 97 executive and DJ Ebro Darden says, "She may come out as aggressive, emotional and angry, and once they tag you with that angry or bitter tag, it discredits what you are trying to say. But I think what she's trying to say" in relation to the frustrations of black women who feel undervalued "is very important."
|
212 Release
Quote:
But because she was "prideful," she decided to release "212" on her own, recording the track in a friend's bedroom and premiering it on YouTube with a black-and-white, micro-budget video in which she bounced around in a dirty Mickey Mouse sweatshirt while smirking at the camera. The song made the 19-year-old an instant star, New York's new resident cool girl, and eventually sold 250,000 copies after she put it out digitally, according to Nielsen Music
|
BWET Release:
Quote:
So she started to take back control. "I don't turn to anyone for advice," she explains. "I do what I want." Banks surprise-released Broke With Expensive Taste on iTunes in November 2014 -- although she didn't put out a physical CD until just now, on March 27, and in total the album has only sold 31,000 copies, according to Nielsen Music. Still, the music is as dense and exciting as "212," pulling from a seemingly endless pastiche of influences, including garage rock (grungy California singer Ariel Pink produced "Nude Beach A-Go-Go"). And Banks will tour this year with a full band for the first time -- a woman she met "in the nail salon, who does PR" recommended the group -- starting with a major kickoff show at Coachella. "Everyone told me she was unmanageable and difficult," says Prospect Park chairman/CEO Jeff Kwatinetz, her manager since September 2014. "She had a lot of history, a lot of challenges. But she's the most talented artist I've ever worked with." The goal for 2015? "To get people to focus on her music."
|
Her Fable:
Quote:
Banks reads from the opening chapter to her story: "Once upon a time there was a container and the container was filled with space. Inside the space was white light and dark matter ..." She reads for a half-hour, telling a metaphysical allegory that reveals her frustration with race relations in America. It's more veiled than the way she approached the subject in her Playboy interview, demanding reparations for slavery and its aftermath.
With the book, Banks wants to show people how her mind works -- how deeply she actually thinks about both her music and the bombastic words that she says online.
|
Her manager on Playboy:
Quote:
Says Kwatinetz (Manager), "My immediate reaction to Playboy's offer was, 'No f--ing way.' I asked other people around the office, though, and they said, 'There could be something here.' " Even though she disavows it as any kind of statement, Banks clearly thinks of the pictorial as an act of defiance, maintaining that "people are so repulsed by me, because I'm such a polarizing figure, that no one really wants to see me naked."
|
Business & Pleasure:
Quote:
In real life, she volunteers, "I sleep with my security guards. I love security guards. They're these big meathead bald white guys with blue eyes. And I have had sex with a lot of my female friends. It's a proximity thing. It's why I am going to call my next record Business and Pleasure, because I'm always mixing the two."
|
Full Interview: http://www.billboard.com/articles/ne...source=twitter
Buy Here: http://shop.billboard.com/products/b...e-127-issue-10
|
|
|