In new music, Azealia Banks dropped a sleek black-and-white video for "Chasing Time" while Shanice dropped two singles, "We Can Fly" and "Gotta Blame Me"...
Last week, Azealia Banks "pulled a Beyonce" (it's a pop culture thing now) and (kinda) surprised us with the release of her brilliant debut album Broke With Expensive Taste. This week, she hits us with a futuristic black-and-white video about a love affair gone astray - or is it?
Over the past two years, we've followed Azealia's celebrity Twitter beefs and problems with Interscope, so it's interesting that her latest single is about walking away from a strained relationship with the music industry. During an interview with Pitchfork, Azealia revealed that she recorded the song shortly before she was released from Interscope.
"After I [self-]released the Fantasea mixtape [in 2012], and saw all this Internet success. I went on tour with a mixtape! With costumes! And it was being completely ignored by the label. They were almost trying to pretend that what I was doing wasn't happening. It was confusing. And you know, I was young and having a real good time bugging out. Around that time, I was like, "OK, they don't really get this." And then once I started turning in Broke With Expensive Taste tracks, I was like, "Oh, they really don't get this."
I don't know what the source of the conflict was because, to my understanding, I thought it was cool with everyone. I would always send them my songs and feel as if they liked me, even if they didn't get it. But it got to a point where they were like, "Azealia, we get it, you’re cool, but we've spent $2 million on this record, can you just give us one [hit]?” So then I did "Chasing Time", and I was just like, “You know, this isn't gonna work out.” It was like that awkward point in a relationship where you're forcing yourself to have sex because you're like, "We live here, we're sleeping in bed, it’s awkward if we don't.”
In addition to breaking up with Interscope, the video serves up some funky fashions, 90s style dance moves and an ode to Lil' Kim (she rocks an outfit with one breast out, covered by a pasty). Watch it above...
In other new music...
Singer Shanice is using her OWN Network docu-series, “Flex & Shanice,” to promote the new music she's been working on. This week, she'll drop a new song (on the show) named "We Can Fly." While, we're not sure why someone with a voice an angelic as Shanice would resort to autotune, we guess it's a sign of the times. Welcome back to the industry Shanice! And listen to the song before the next episode above.
“Flex & Shanice” airs on November 15 at 10 pm ET/PT on OWN.
BONUS:
On last week's episode, Shanice dropped the lush ballad "Gotta Blame Me" saying, the song "transcends color lines and explores one’s personal responsibility for the aftermath and pain associated with breakups." Enjoy.