Azealia Banks Recalls Being “So F**king Broke,” She Had To Sleep In A Storage Unit
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Azealia Banks has opened up about the more humbling moments of her life in a new cover story with Dazed. The controversial Hip-Hop/Dance artist spoke on a time when she was “famous and broke,” and living in unfavorable conditions.
“There was a point in time when people didn’t want to book me,” Banks recalled of her music career following several public controversies. “I had ni**as stealing my royalties and all type of sh*t. Like, there was a point in time when I was so f**king broke that I was sleeping in a storage space. You know, famous and broke.”
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The 31-year-old also admitted to being “messy” and making “bad jokes” — something that has placed her in the tabloids repeatedly.
“I can be a little messy,” she expressed. “Everybody makes a bad joke sometimes. Like, who cares? Quentin Tarantino gets paid $500,000,000 to make really bad jokes all the time, you know? Come on. Let me get my sh*t off.”
One of Banks’ most explosive riffs with social media came when she took aim at Beyoncé and Jay-Z in September 2022.
The Harlemite took to her Instagram Stories to address the history-making Grammy-winner about being “obviously sad” over the years. Banks compared Queen Bey to Kim Kardashian, with claims that the reality star has appeared “healthier” than the Renaissance icon.
Azealia Banks Takes Aim At Beyoncé And Jay-Z
“I never in a million years thought Kim K would look healthier, more alert, more sober, and overall happier and in control of her sh*t than Beyoncé,” she said unprovoked.
The “I Rule The World” artist continued speaking on Bey and even mentioned her marriage to the Brooklyn-bred living-legend.
“Hate comparing, but Bey really dropped the ball on the aspirational pieces,” Banks added. “She looks sooooo obviously sad with JAY-Z, and watching that every drain year after year just turns me off from how powerful she seemed to me as a kid.”
She ended her rant with, “Dead a** mean this with the most love ever, it’s time for you to get some NEW D**K, so you can have some new energy and inspiration!!! That JAY-Z d**k is out of steam honey. Leave his deflated a** where he is, he would do it to you.”
Her controversial remarks sent social media into war with the Warner Music signee, who usually doesn’t back down easily.
Banks also revealed that a lot of unpredictable behavior does comes from how she was raised.
“I would just be in my head, like, ‘Does my mother not want me any more? Is she coming back? Is she alive?’” she spoke of her upbringing, where her mother would leave her and her siblings for weeks at a time, with “a couple thousand dollars” to hold them over.
She added that her mom would brag that she used “witchcraft” to “kill” her father.
“I was always being told that I was a bad person, and I guess I kind of just accepted it as the truth,” she went on amid mentioning that she’s diagnosed as bi-polar. “And I think a lot of that early indoctrination, especially during my fundamental years, followed me into the music industry – where you would see me lashing out at people and just, like, being bad. Because that’s who I was told I was.”
“When I came into fame and I had all these people showering me with love and admiration, [telling me] I was good and they liked the things I was creating, it was really uncomfortable for me,” she added. “I didn’t know how to accept any of that. Nobody ever told me that I was pretty when I was little.”
Give Azealia Banks’ cover story with Dazed a read here.
