Controversial raptress Azealia Banks has reportedly been dropped from her record label, Interscope, over derogatory remarks she made about gay blogger Perez Hilton.
According to an email received by Gossip We Love:
Interscope Records, the Universal Music Group label founded by Jimmy Iovine is reportedly not picking up the much-buzzed-about the 21-year-old rapper’s option for future recordings, says a source close to the situation. When approached today about Banks’ current debut album situation, the label insider simply stated, “Azealia Banks will no longer be releasing her LP under Interscope.”
Things got heated between Banks and Hilton over the weekend after the gossip queen said Banks’ “attention-seeking ways are pathetic and hurtful”, prompting the 21-year-old Harlem native to call Hilton a “messy faggot” who “should just kill yourself.”
Her comments caused outrage across the interwebs, leading Scissor Sister Jake Shears to toss in his two Twitter cents:
How about we take this to the next level?
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Oh yeah. “Faggot.” Totally cool. Give me a fucking break. It all about context. And right now, I’m sorry, but context is not on your side.Donna Summer was ostracized for a decade from words she used about her gay fans. Too bad she didn’t have twitter to recant them immediately.
GLAAD, which counted Banks among its most powerful coming out stories of 2012, also weighed in:
Banks’ claim that the word “fa**ot” doesn’t mean a gay male is not true. Regardless of her intent or her personal definition, what matters is the meaning given to that word by those who hear it, and the damage it causes when they do. Undoubtedly there are gay kids who follow her on Twitter who hear this word in an entirely different context. This word is used almost universally by bullies, often as part of a larger verbal or physical assault. This word hurts those kids, no matter what Banks meant by it.
In spite of, or may because of, the tweeting tumult, Azealia’s feathers remain unruffled:
Really not as moved by this f word thing as u all want me to be. As a bisexual person I knew what I meant when I used that word. And I meant what I meant when I used that word. You human beings have bigger life problems then what I think about some played out gossip dude…..
And yesterday she released another diss track against rival Angel Haze, entitled “No Problems”:
2eo
Hehe, right in the bank account. The only thing halfwits like her have the ability to understand.
Your career is over, and far too long it was anyway.
PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID
And that site you link.., THIS is where you source your journalism? SMH.
Searching for a shred of proof…
iBLOW
If she did get dropped I’m sure she’ll get signed by someone else probably by Kanye West’s label, because she does have potential she should just stay off twitter.
Cam
Things would go much better if they just said “Yes, I was angry and it is a stupid word, I shouldn’t have used it, I apologize.”
But these idiot celebs rarely do that. Lying and saying that the word doesn’t refer to gays is just stupid. It was like when some burned out old politician tred to claim that the N word didn’t just refer to black people.
Happyemblmer
Humans need to evolve from being so offended by trivial words. Perez Hilton does less for the gay community than the word “faggot” does to harm it. He’s an asshole and if someone who identifies as bisexual wants to call him a messy faggot, go ahead. 212 is an amazing song and her ideas on the word are interesting enough not to align her with others who use the word. We all need to grow up and stop crying every time someone says it. Faggot faggot faggot. See, the world did not end.
CaptainFabulous
@Happyemblmer: It’s not the word that the issue, it’s the intent to malign using the word that’s the issue. Words are just what we use to communicate. Certain words when used in a certain way convey an intent to harm, insult, or belittle. The word itself is irrelevant, it’s the intent behind it.
I can stab you with knife, club you with a 5 iron, or shoot you with a .22. Does what I used to injure you matter more than the fact I just tried to kill you?
biguy
Perez is a skeezy bitch, stupid of her to post it on twitter the way she did but he is way more disgusting than her.
Spike
Congrats Queerty, You’ve done a great job of promoting this Banks person, whom I’m guessing none of us have ever heard of, at the same time tolerating some classic bullying of Perez in the comments.
Just a tiny bit jealous of the hits his site gets compared to yours? Imagine that.
Charlie in Charge
Oof, there are so many other words to call Perez Hilton (a truly loathsome being) I wish she had chosen one of the others.
Samuel
There is so much of double standards involved here.
This is not just any black artist but a bisexual black artist who called Perez a fag. Just to refresh Memories, Perez is on record calling Will.I.am a fag;‘You’re not an artist, you’re a f-ggot.’
http://www.thesuperficial.com/perez_hilton_to_william_youre-06-2009
I can understand that outrage if she had used that word against someone else. but against Perez… who has done so himself….
People please we need to clear things up here
Rockery
Someone else will pick her up (if this is even true)
bigbben
FIRSTLY, PEREZ IS A VILE PERSON AND A RATHER MESSY INCURABLE STD AND YES HE TOO HAS USED THE VAUNTED F WORD, SO RELAX YOU SELF RIGHTEOUS ZEALOTS!
PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID
Freedom of speech…being too overly sensitive? Okay, but she’s inconsistent.
Dolce and Gabbana put out earrings depicting stereotypical slave era mammy heads and Azealia goes postal calls for a boycott…so she knows the hurt of unnecessarily defaming a whole group and has her own line drawn in the sand.
unfortunately, the compass of her sensitivity or concern has no regard for gay, bi, or indeed any man who is in any way gender non-conforming. She can NOT have any idea what this word can mean to gay man regardless of her expounded bisexuality. She has not been attacked for being less than female — unlike the way she taunts angel haze claiming she’s not a real woman and secretly trans or a man.
Ms banks’ message is a deeply conservative gender policing one. shes enthralled by heterosexual male power doesn’t attack the status quo only seeks to emulate it, not challenge it in any meaningful way. The woman recently admitted she stayed in an abusive relationship with her manager who more than once physically assaulted her; this is not some brave champion fighting oppression with us — She is as fucked up and damaged by this Hetero normative misogynist patriarchal society as any of us and yet she feeds into it. And that’s fine but not when your base is a large extent made up of gay men and lesbians and you’re helping to keep alive words Like FAGGOT just as they are dying out in main stream culture and even rap.
That said I think she’s amazingly skilled and. incredibly witty; but she’s an asshole that hasn’t really got our back (just our money) and there is no getting around the fact no matter what her stans think. This is a teachable moment for her because this cannot go on; too many kids are not battle-hardened enough to cope with the extra burden of their idols undermining their own self esteem apropos their masculinity, or for that matter non femme lesbians self-worth.
Long ass post, sorry.
PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID
@PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID: * her ESPOUSED bisexuality
2eo
I love the inability of most of you to actually understand the situation I presented. I hate Perez Hilton and Azaelia Banks, it’s just an opportunity to jam a knife in her career which she doesn’t deserve as her music is dire.
I don’t need to listen to Perez Hilton, ever but her music poisons the radio when I am outvoted at work. We aren’t allowed to use Spotify or streaming services anymore.
The fact I have to even point this out is a rather damning indictment of most of you.
PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID
I don’t want an artist to pander to me, nor coddle me, and i don’t believe they can’t ever be critical — which is part of the function of art in society; and I think in the right context they can join in with insider group humor…i just don’t want to be needlessly unthinkingly attacked. I don’t think that’s too much to ask.
I have a lesbian friend and we throw around bulldyke and fag etc. but I would never dream of addressing another gay woman thus, especially not in public, and most definetly not in hate.
PRINCE OF SNARKNESS aka DIVKID
And to be fair Perez Hilton Issued a mea culpa a while back and I believe has toned down his shtick… which is when I, like most people, lost interest in him because without the mean it wasn’t fun anymore. Yeah, we suck as a species
Thomas
Music and performing artists serve as role models for our youth, and rap especially strikes a note for today’s youth. For an “out” artist whose words have great meaning to youth to show so little respect for life, and so easily tell someone they should be dead is unacceptable. http://thomascwaters.com/2013/01/24/out-faggot-azealia-banks/