Well this is reassuring: a new Azealia Banks track that’s produced by Hudson Mohawke and Nick Hook (see also: Cubic Zirconia and the live bands of El-P and Drop the Lime). Which pretty much proves the singer/rapper isn’t severing her underground ties now that Kanye and Karl (Lagerfield, that is) are up in her business.
Grab “Jumanji” in the above player and look out for her Fantastic mixtape this summer. In the meantime, we’ve got Banks’ first stateside cover story here.
In what can only be described as a full circle collab considering Diplo first brought Azealia Banks to the attention of a then-nonplussed XL Recordings a few years back, the pair have teamed up for a new track called “Fuck Up the Fun.” Grab it in the player above, and check out our lengthy interview/cover story from late last year here.
And the meteoric rise of self-titled‘s current cover star continues, as Azealia Banks shares a runaway edit of “Bambi”—the first byproduct of her Paul Epworth sessions—with Mugler. Check out the line’s fashion week video below, alongside a streaming version of Banks’ track…
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As promised late last week, Azealia Banks unveiled her latest single via Twitter this morning, writing, “It’s R&B but hella progressive. It’s about being a guy’s other girl. It’s about knowing that ur number #2, but still sticking around in hopes of becoming #1.”
While that may sound a little vague, Banks talked in depth about a doomed relationship that drove her to a serious bout with depression in our current issue:
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Photos by Michael Flores
Words by Arye Dworken
In the breakout video for her single “212,” rapper Azealia Banks beams an eager, ever- present smile and dances playfully in front of a blank-canvas brick wall. Her pigtails draped over a Mickey Mouse–adorned sweater, she spits blush-inducing verses like an R-rated Pippi Longstocking. Banks is confident, care-free and, most of all, undeniably intriguing—a girl you feel like you want (need?) to know.
This isn’t, however, the Banks we meet near Central Park. The Azealia Banks we’re chatting with is genial but quite reserved—a slight 20-year-old in pink patent-leather platforms who isn’t afraid to remind us we’ve “already asked that question.” And has no qualms about telling our photographer where she wants to do our photo shoot: near her high school, Fame’s LaGuardia Arts—not at the Harlem neighborhood where she grew up, as we’d previously planned.
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Photo by Michael Flores
Check out our Azealia Banks cover story after the jump alongside her latest leaked track (backed by a Lone beat, no less), or grab the enhanced iPad edition—featuring 145 streaming songs, right on the page!—here…
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Photos by Elizabeth Weinberg
A lot’s happened since the last time self-titled spent an afternoon with Das Racist, exploring the Queens neighborhood where MC Heems and hypeman Dapwell grew up. For one thing, the Brooklyn trio—rounded out by Kool A.D., possibly the only rapper we’ve ever seen rocking a pair of Zubaz pants—finally released its first proper album, Relax, a record that rightfully earned the group a Spin cover and the tagline “hip-hop’s smartest smartasses.” Relax has also kept Das Racist on the road for the past few months.
So rather than grill them about their role in underground rap or what it was like working with members of Vampire Weekend, Yeasayer and El-P, we asked the group about 25 of 2011’s most talked-about tracks…
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The Men, shot at their rehearsal space
Photo by Jimmy Fontaine
As promised late last week, we’ve uploaded the Web version of our latest issue for mass consumption a few days earlier than our enhanced iPad edition. Check it out below—featuring cover stories on Azealia Banks, The Men and Factory Floor, and exclusive features with Nicolas Jaar, Charlotte Gainsbourg and many, many more—or on a dedicated widescreen page here…
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The question of “Why not?” came up a lot while creating this issue—like when a 2 a.m. set from The Men left a self-titled photographer with a cracked camera and the rest of us thinking we should really thank the band with a cover story. Or the moment we realized a second cover might be necessary, despite the fact that Azealia Banks had yet to released a proper record. (Sure enough, Banks is now working with Paul Epworth, the producer responsible for Adele’s “Rolling in the Deep” single and Florence + the Machine’s entire Ceremonials album.) And then two covers turned into three (or make that five, actually), after DFA dropped Factory Floor’s “Two Different Ways,” a next-step single big enough for us to send The Quietus co-founder Luke Turner to the trio’s London rehearsal space for some answers about their album on the horizon.
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Azealia Banks leaked two unreleased Machinedrum tracks through her Twitter today, and since they’re both killer, we thought we’d share them with you below alongside her breakthrough “212″ single and self-titled cover story…
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