Broke with Expensive Taste
Though beset by label delays and Twitter squabbles, no amount of innuendo could stymie the vividly original debut by Harlem pop iconoclast Azealia Banks. The snaking electro-house breakout \"212\" remains essential listening, flanked by a kaleidoscopic mélange of Latin, funk, trap, and hip-hop: forget naming styles, they\'re all here. Rapping and singing with equal aplomb, Banks anchors the spooky U.K. garage of \"Desperado\" as ably as she does the industrial skronk of \"Yung Rapunxel\" (the conflation of \"rap\" and \"punk\" there is no accident). The Ariel Pink collaboration \"Nude Beach A-Go-Go,\" with its echoes of Gidget and \'50s pop, is positively flummoxing in the best way.
Three years after "212", her confrontationally profane lead single, Azealia Banks has finally released her proper debut. It's all over the place, with tracks new and old and production that runs the gamut from Ariel Pink to Lone to AraabMuzik, and it functions as a sort of anthology, complete with flashes of brilliance.
Azealia Banks finally released that first LP. And it's really worth the wait.
Check out our album review of Artist's Broke With Expensive Taste on Rolling Stone.com.
Broke with Expensive Taste, the official debut album from rapper/songwriter Azealia Banks, finally appeared in late 2014, despite originally having been scheduled for a 2012 release and well after several songs showed up as singles many months and sometimes years before an album surfaced.
Fraught with interminable delays and self-sabotaging Twitter beefs, Azealia Banks' career was about to take yet another, potentially career-flatlining L if her debut full-length, Broke With Expensive Taste did not drop by the end of the calendar year.
Album review: Azealia Banks - Broke With Expensive Taste. Never less than entirely entertaining, and much better than expected...
After a long wait, Azealia Banks’s debut finally lands. It was worth the wait, writes <strong>Suzie McCracken</strong>
Unfocused and sporadically brilliant, ranging between irritating moments of woolgathering oddness and ripe, sharply delivered wordplay.
Broke With Expensive Taste shows why people got excited about Banks in the first place, even if it remains a niche concern, writes<strong> Alex Macpherson</strong>