Broke with Expensive Taste… and a big mouth. Azealia Banks left no stone unturned in her April 2015 cover story with Playboy, and the multifaceted interview is garnering, well, controversy.
Banks, 23, who's famously ignited feuds with fellow stars like Iggy Azalea, Lady Gaga, Eminem, and Nicki Minaj, targeted yet another young pop star in her latest rant. "It’s always about race," she complained to Playboy. "Lorde can run her mouth [on Twitter] and talk s— about all these other bitches, but y’all aren’t saying she’s angry. If I have something to say, I get pushed into the corner."
Asked why she always brings up the topic, Banks retorted: "Because y’all motherf—ers still owe me reparations! [laughs] That’s why it’s still about race. Really, the generational effects of Jim Crow and poverty linger on. As long as I have my money, I’m getting the f— out of here and I’m gonna leave y’all to your own devices."
In fact, the Harlem-raised singer says she hates the United States of America — and a very specific group of its citizens. "I hate everything about this country," she railed. "Like, I hate fat white Americans. All the people who are crunched into the middle of America, the real fat and meat of America, are these racist conservative white people who live on their farms. Those little teenage girls who work at Kmart and have a racist grandma—that’s really America."
"I get annoyed with the fact that I’m even asked to explain myself," she continued. "Why do I have to explain this to y’all? My little white fans will be like, “Why do you want reparations for work you didn’t do?” Well, you got handed down your grandfather’s estate and you got to keep your grandmother’s diamonds and pearls and s—."
Banks' opinions were formed, it turns out, at a young age. "We had journals in second grade. I went to PS 166, on 88th Street and Columbus Avenue, and we had a teacher I could not stand," she recalled to the mag. "The black kids got in trouble all the time. We were loud or whatever, but whenever she told a white kid to quiet down and they did, she’d be like, whatever. But if she told a black kid to quiet down and one of them sucked their teeth, she’d put them in the corner. I wrote in the journal one day, 'I cannot stand this white bitch teacher. F— this white bitch.' She found my journal and called my mother, who was embarrassed, because my mother used to say stuff like that—'White people are of the devil. Stay away from them.'"
Now that she's all grown up, Banks has been questioning all things she's learned throughout her life. "In my adulthood I’m having to destroy all these things society really wants you to think. The history textbooks in the U.S. are the worst if you’re not white," she explained. "'The white man gave you the vote. He Christianized you and taught you how to speak English. If it weren’t for him, you’d still be living in a hut.'"
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Banks claimed that she, personally, should be educating young minds. "I could write a book about why black people shouldn’t be Christians. Young black kids should have their own special curriculum that doesn’t start from the boat ride over from Africa," she wrote. "All you know as a black kid is we came over here on a boat, we didn’t have anything, and we still don’t have anything. But what was happening in Africa? What culture were we pulled away from? That information is vital to the survival of a young black soul."
The sole hip-hop superstar that Banks wants to emulate is none other than Jay Z. "That’s the only person I have my eye set on," she shared. "The race thing always comes up, but I want to get there being very black and proud and boisterous about it. You get what I mean? A lot of times when you’re a black woman and you’re proud, that’s why people don’t like you. In American society, the game is to be a nonthreatening black person. That’s why you have Pharrell or Kendrick Lamar saying, 'How can we expect people to respect us if we don’t respect ourselves?' He’s playing that nonthreatening black man s—, and that gets all the white soccer moms going, 'We love him.'"
Banks, in turn, said Jay's fellow collaborator Kanye West is at fault for playing along. "Even Kanye West plays a little bit of that game," she said, while mocking Kim Kardashian's husband: "'Please accept me, white world.'" Unlike West, "Jay Z hasn’t played any of those games," she noted, "and that’s what I like."
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