In a series of savage social media posts, Azealia Banks has called the Australian music industry “unimportant” and “culturally stale“.
Yesterday, the Dazed cover star shared a lengthy rant on her Instagram stories about how a “piss poor remix“ of ‘New Bottega’ was released in the country instead of her preferred version. “They basically denatured my intellectual property, cherry-picked what they wanted from it and fraudulently presented it to the world AS the song EYE [sic] wrote,” she said.
She then went on to slam the entirety of Australia’s music industry. “Australia’s media/music/entertainment industry isn’t exactly heralded by the heads of government or anyone in the world as a coveted cultural export,” she wrote. “I don’t think they realize how unimportant they are because they’re deluded with the idea that their whiteness makes Australia an A Market, when it’s truly a C-D market.” Damn x
She named Kylie Minogue, INXS and AC/DC as the only exceptions to the rule, adding that she thinks Tame Impala are “cheesy” while Wolfmother are “excellent – but clearly an American rock tribute band”.
In a separate post, Banks also shared part of a Guardian report on Australia’s listening habits, which found that in 2022, just five Australian songs were among the top 50 most streamed tracks in Australia that year. “Australians don’t even want to hear Australian music LOL,” Banks wrote.
“Australia doesn’t really have many music acts that anyone truly cares about on a global scale because they’re in a vacuum of off-brand British culture [...] they have actually created one of the most culturally stale white nations on the planet.” She went on to suggest that this was potentially a result of “how aggressive, barbaric, oppressive and violent” the country has been towards “native black peoples”.
She added: “Y’all stomped all the blackness out of Australia – which is why your music exports suck, and we don’t feel bad for you.”
This isn’t the first time Banks has come out swinging against Australia. Towards the end of 2022, she cancelled a show in Brisbane just hours before she was due to go on stage, citing a past concert in the city where a member of the audience threw a bottle at her as “the most racist, most demoralising experience of my fucking life”. She has also vowed to never return to Australia on tour. “This place makes me utterly miserable and I’m too black and beautiful to have a bunch of white people in my face playing with me over their WEAK ASS CURRENCY,” she said.