Azealia Banks Explains Why She’s Never Releasing Music Again
Ever since she rose up to fame with 2011’s breakthrough “212,” Azealia Banks has become just as well known for her headline-making comments as she is for her music. Over the past six years, especially, Banks’ feuds — which most recently included Grimes and Elon Musk — have become arguably easier to recall than the titles of her other songs. Now, though, Banks may be putting an end to her music career — or, at least, for the public’s consumption. In a winding note on Instagram, Banks revealed that she is “not ever going to release music again.”
Her reasoning? “I’m entirely too good for 3/4 of the public,” she wrote. “They don’t deserve me and I don’t deserve to have my life’s purpose attached to ‘having to work three times as hard as a white woman’ lmfao FOH. How about I don’t work at all , collect [debt] and make a multi million dollar shit talk YouTube channel effectively making an exponentially higher amount of money than I’d make ‘working three times as hard’.”
Banks also talked about how the added challenge of being a black woman is a factor in her decision. “If you cannot tell by now, Azealia Banks has been trying her hardest to hack the ‘three times as hard as a white woman code’,” she wrote, referring to herself in third person. “Some of you may see it as stupidity but I cannot, have not and will never accept that as a rule of my life, I will actually do the exact opposite in order to disrupt whatever spiritual warfare there is attached to that ‘three times as hard’ ideology…. that is not an original black woman’s thought ….. that is something she has been taught and something I’ve dedicated my life to undoing. Although I was naturally born an exceptionally talented being, it behooves me to exhibit normalcy and humanity outside of being the stellar over achieving negress American social archetype each and every one of your favorite black female celebrities are. Even if I must underachieve or be mediocre…”
She then name-dropped Quentin Tarantino, writing, “I will do so in order for the greater white society to UNDERSTAND, that my existence is NEVER EVER for their comfort, entertainment or consumption. The way whiteness engages with black entertainers is still not sterile enough for me to want to engage at that level. I want the special American psychopath pass given to Quentin Tarantino.”
The most surprising aspect of her post, though, is the final line, where she writes, “Until then you can read my rants and listen to the one song I drop a year.” So is she never releasing music again? Or is she just going to be dropping one song a year? Or was that “one song I drop a year” supposed to refer to the past? Only time will tell.
