azealia banks is our last culture critic

poking at my internet brain these last few months

historians, socioeconomics, and critics look at culture from a distance—that distance being time, for all the context it provides.

blah blah context aside, the art of criticism hinges on the fact that society comes to understand happenings in culture from a reactionary point of view. we are meant to respond to the past, present, and future.

at the top of the pyramid of people reacting to things are people who react to things as their profession. the ones that identify trends and psychoanalyze society’s behaviors and values to reach a conclusion. it’s the business of noticing things.

and here are things i noticed in the waves of our hiatus:

no. 01 - the impending death of the journalist

i don’t worry about the job as a whole, but i do think journalism’s definition—aka the point of a criticism, op-ed, profile—needs to be visited.

copy’d below is a snippet from the 2023 person of the year interview that irked me.

Here, Swift has told me a story about redemption, about rising and falling only to rise again—a hero’s journey. I do not say to her, in our conversation, that it did not always look that way from the outside—that, for example, when Reputation’s lead single “Look What You Made Me Do” reached No. 1 on the charts, or when the album sold 1.3 million albums in the first week, second only to 1989, she did not look like someone whose career had died. She looked like a superstar who was mining her personal experience as successfully as ever.

I am tempted to say this.

But then I think, Who am I to challenge it, if that’s how she felt? The point is: she felt canceled. She felt as if her career had been taken from her.

you are a journalist!! it is actually your purpose to challenge it!!

in uncovering the root of a story that means something, the critic/journalist must challenge the perception that is given up to this point. feelings sway interpretation, sure, but fact brings reason to perceptions. journalists are concerned with etiquette and niceties and appeasing everyone instead of doing what the profession intended: creating discourse. they fear opinion, or rather, the way their opinion is received by the public.

without the challenge, the next thing lost is interest. why would i read a profile that says the same thing repeated by every swiftie? a more interesting article would be the contrast between taylor’s internal perspective vs the public perception. all it needed was a little reframing… and the confidence to be culturally unpopular. bring back the art of op-eds !

but alas: niceties.

one person that doesn’t give a damn about niceties is azealia banks. she might be the biggest hater i have ever witnessed on the internet. and she’s always beefing with somebody ! just look up her name + your birthday to find out what unserious drama she’s responsible for.

azealia banks may not have a pulitzer prize in criticism, but she did sing luxury and 212. her unique pov and unhinged instagram stories enchant me. her pen moves too quickly for my internet brain to handle, so i’ll be referencing my favorite instagram essay from the last two months.

no. 02 - banks vs cowboy carter

she says a lot, and for a unique case such as this—commentary about azealia banks’ commentary is actually the least interesting route. she has such a way with words and perspective, that the journey of reading her thoughts is an experience of its own. you can find that: here.

i will, however, share one excerpt from her 4-page critique. keep in mind that she posted this before cowboy carter was released. a week later, she went on her story to proclaim that she’s “about to eat [her] words.”

…it’s crazy to me that all it takes is some white person’s opinion of her to start tap dancing. This is almost as bad as her “feminist” era after some white kunts called her boring and predictable on a blog. Sis that was a psyop. You were never boring. Jayz is the only boring thing here.

[in reference to beyoncé’s caption about limitations placed on her]: GOLLY… Beyonce you’re a notoriously bad actress lmao yet no ever stops you from doing it… Challenging yourself?! Girl Challenge your ego and Collab with Rihanna.

whether azealia banks loves beyoncé or not is debatable, but one thing’s for certain, she hates jay-z. and she’s always going to suggest that artists challenge their egos/get off their high-horse/grow tf up and collab with somebody.

she sits down and hates before writing. i doubt much thinking is powering her critique because her opinion changes with the drop of a hat. while the journalists pack it up and revisit why discourse is entertaining and essential, they should examine the azealia banks case study for why being a hater just works.

no. 03 - the rise of personal essays

“But Twitter is real life; it's realer than real life, because that is the realm that the social economy of publishing exists on, because the industry has no alternative.”
― R.F. Kuang, Yellowface

instead of going to therapy, tembe denton-hurst wrote a novel. that’s the kind of moving-in-silence mindset i want to adopt (maybe definitely consider therapy). keep the lists of rejected queries and failed manuscripts between me, myself, and a close circle of friends. maybe even my close friends story.

but then i hear the cautionary tale of writers bragging about a novel they’re working on only to never finish it. writing is solitary. the more time you spend on a novel will teach and reward you all the same. if you aren’t published now you’ll hate and revere being published later. oml shoot me.

the twenty-something writer persona is all about growing your platform and getting published. but that also exposes us to the pool of every complex twenty-something who wishes to be notable-if-not-extraordinary.

i think writers can’t help but fear the immortality factor—of what the court of public opinion will say about them. “oh i’m a much more seasoned writer, but the internet will only remember me for that supes stupid, embarrassing, out-of-pocket personal essay the new yorker published twenty years ago.” that kind of thing.

and then there’s the writers that have no shame. they get published on the cut.

by the cut’s definition (see also: about page), their intimate personal essays sharpen [our] ideas and enter [our] group chats. i think their editors have successfully taken advantage of click/rage bait. i love the cut. they have positioned themselves as a digital publication with a lifestyle of their own design - and there’s lots of elements to admire about them. things like their life after roe column that is constantly updated and all the profiles on literary writers.

but i also love going on twitter to see my entire timeline discussing the latest unhinged unbelievable absolutely delusional essay. like a moshfegh character has come to life to pain, i mean entertain, us all. i imagine that the cut’s editors applaud themselves over the state of the internet after scheduling a crazy insane piece on their editorial calendar.

personal essays like the woman with a flush ponytail, high breasts, plausible purity, most of her eggs, and a pep in her step (her words, not mine) who claims the key to living a good life is marrying an older man when the descriptor she’s really looking for is richer. or the financial-advice columnist who swore up and down she isn’t the type of person to get scammed, only to put $50k (in cash!) in a box and gave it to a stranger. i couldn’t even write storylines like this if i was under the influence.

that’s enough internet brain from me. stay chronically online, stay cutieful <3

fai wanted to share her sketch for the graphic :3