Azealia Banks + Mary J. Blige | Tracks

“212”
Azealia Banks 

Let’s nip this in the bud: Azealia Banks does not sound like Nicki Minaj. That’s the recurring comparison, as they both went to LaGuardia Arts High School in Manhattan. Then again, so did Kelis, Jean Grae and Liza Minnelli, and you can hear bits of all of them, amazingly, in Banks’s online demos. Listening to her sing an Interpol cut as electro-cabaret R&B, or breeze through bar after bar of raunch-rap, gives one the feeling of being a baseball scout. Banks has five tools, but the game hasn’t all come together for her yet. “212” puts the whole array on display. As an MC, she is comfortable in the pocket, making an aggressive Eurohouse beat seem like a leather recliner. She can even brattily drop “cunt” repeatedly with some kind of grace. The chorus swerves so severely into jazz-club crooning, it’s hard to believe this is the same girl. The Minaj analogy has happened for the sad fact that she is the only mainstream female rapper of any renown. But not for long, perhaps.