It’s All Gossip Folks
This article first appeared in the online publication Spook Magazine (which is now offline) in 2015 under the title ‘It’s All Gossip Folks: When The Media Interrupts Music Engagement’.
In 2012 I waited in the crowd at The Palace Theatre in Melbourne for Azealia Banks to come on stage. While waiting, a friend showed me an Instagram that Banks had just posted. Daria Morgendorffer with folded arms, the caption read:‘Why didn’t I just stay home where it’s nice and quiet, and nothing ever happens?’
Hearing news of Azealia Banks coming back to Australia [in 2015] for Splendour in the Grass, my stomach knotted as I remembered that last performance. Banks was nearly an hour late, and my friend had remarked afterward that she was disappointed by the performance (or paying to see it I guess).
It occurred to me that where others seemed to be annoyed by Azealia’s behaviour, I only grew concerned. When I watched her on stage, I waited for the right sequence of events, she sometimes hit it, a smile moving into the next song or a noticeable enjoyment mid-dance. I silently wished she would never stop.
In 2013, Banks again in Australia for Listen Out Festival, walked off stage when someone threw a bottle at her. In 2011 while in Brisbane for Big Day Out Tyler, the Creator tweeted about a run-in with a racist at a KFC as well as feeling ‘a weird vibe’ from the predominately white audience. Earlier in 2015, Joey Bada$$ had a violent run-in with a security guard at Falls Music and Arts Festival when the guard assumed Joey was trying to sneak backstage. It’s hard not to hear about these incidents and not feel like Daria with her arms crossed, too bored to be stubborn about making a point, because these incidents are proof of something intangible.
Shouldn’t Banks have skipped out on stage ready to perform despite hesitations? Wasn’t Tyler expecting too much from KFC clientele? Wasn’t the security guard just doing his job? The actions of Azealia Banks, Tyler, the Creator and Joey Bada$$ become the only tangible evidence anyone can look at, proving them difficult, paranoid and aggressive. From here on out their actions are watched through these lenses, and fans begin to retreat.
According to online music media, Azealia Banks creates disputes more than she makes music and lives to start feuds. Online music media seems not to be aware that while Azealia Banks can be moody, stubborn and aggressive, so are many other people and that some (myself included) can handle that. As though any person reading online music media can’t recognise their behaviour or those of old friends, could look beyond it even, and not in search of a lesson in morality (as though one goes looking for that in a club). The way online music media talks about Azealia Banks you would think she, along with the full scope of human emotions and reactions, was something freakish or alien.
Sharing ‘news’ via the internet has become such a quick transaction that the innate sense of attitude that rap embodies and offers its listeners is recoiled against in denial of the fact that opinions don’t matter and aren’t always bankable. Expressing yourself does matter though, but only if you’re genuine, which gossip isn’t. Gossip is a school friend remarking to me in the eighth grade that we should give a girl who just wanted to be left alone a makeover. Gossip is obsessed with itself, but if it’s effective it can do damage to someone’s character, and that’s the dumbest side-effect of all in the current trend of not reporting, but merely commenting.
When Azealia Banks questioned why gay males refer to women as bitches, I was not surprised on her part because she is openly obnoxious. Banks pushes what she cares to say in your face. She is not aware of polite society’s rulebook, where you can get away with being thought of as good by never being called out on doing something impolite. Azealia Banks is provocative in a way that only comes from being excluded from polite society.
The naughtiness of rumour holds a similar promise of escape that the deflection gossip offers. The promise that it is the other that is wholly worthy of dismissal, and that by comparison your great qualities will appear enhanced. To dismiss others based on rumour about them is to never, in fact, see yourself. As I did, waiting on Banks to come on stage back in 2012. After reading a Dazed And Confused interview with her the same year of that gig, I learned that Banks got into trouble at school for letting boys grab her ass in the canteen line. She told the magazine that her longing to be touched stemmed from confusing sexual attention with the love she wasn’t getting at home. But this narrative is not that commonly shared. The person we know is the Azealia Banks who beefed with Erykah Badu, Iggy Azalea, and Angel Haze. The Azealia Banks who hates every single gay person, who argues so much she must have been born arguing because she must have been born bad. Only in online music media is this limited thinking acceptable.
From what I can gather, not that many people believe in divine intervention or a religious idol strictly anymore, so why let the popular vote (or the viral content) decide what you choose to engage with? You don’t have to explain to anyone, so don’t explain, just notice who benefits from finger-pointing and rumours, rather than informed news.
‘Why didn’t I just stay home where it’s nice and quiet and nothing ever happens.’
My sentiments exactly Azealia.
