Azealia Banks Is A Victim Of Misogynoir…Kinda (Preview)

(@azealiabanks via IG)

Yo!

I’ve been writing for a women’s lifestyle site called Vocally for several months now. It’s been a dope experience that provides me a lot of creative freedom while challenging me to write coming from angles that a millennial woman would be attracted to. Gladly, the editing team is dope and I haven’t had to compromise much of my writing voice or interests.

Whenever applicable, usually through a female figure, I write about hip-hop shit on Vocally. Though it’s not the same as the home field advantage I have here at ATC, I’ve come out with some pretty good shit. So today I’ma share a piece I wrote for Vocally about Azealia Banks titled ‘Azealia Banks Is A Victim Of Misogynoir…Kinda‘.

Per my contract, I can’t copy-paste the entire piece and throw it on my own site. But I can give y’all a snippet of what I write over there. In this piece, I discuss the messy truth about Azealia Banks’ unfavorable image in the music business. Everyone is a polarizing social critic on Twitter these days, and the only two positions I ever see people take on Azealia Banks are, “She’s a victim of misogynoir, plain and simple,” ooor, “She’s a loudmouth bitch who undermined her own career by poppin’ off too goddamn much.” I’m here to say Kumbaya, perhaps she’s both!

Peep the sample:

Banks has gone out of her way to equate her commercially-successful female peers with the industry’s misogynoir. Instead of creating conversations surrounding her work and the dissonance between her talent and reputation, she has spewed cruel and aimless criticism at women that she could easily share the spotlight with if she kept her head down and minded her own business for a while.

All in all, systemic racism is real across all industries in the United States. Systemic sexism is, too. Therefore, misogynoir is a very present, unavoidable thing, especially in the music business. Azealia Banks’ work and criticisms of the industry are often filtered through misogynoir whether the people participating in it know it or not. But the point of this piece is to note that many cases of WOC success and failure are more complicated than the false dichotomy of systemic victim or industry pawn… 

For the rest of that article, click this conveniently hyperlinked phrase in the middle of the sentence and slide on over to Vocally to read it! Spend a lil’ time over there and you’ll probably run into more of my work, along with some really refreshing writing from many of the women who write for the site as well.

There’s more where that came from, slide on me later.

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