When it comes to Australia, Azealia Banks isn’t feeling the love.
In a series of Instagram Stories shared yesterday (May 7), Banks wrote about how her recent single “New Bottega” was handled in Australia, claiming a “piss poor remix of my master track” was released over there instead of the preferred version. She writes more about the song and her record contract before going after Australia and its music industry more generally.
“I don’t think they realize how unimportant they are as far as music culture goes because they’re deluded with the idea that their whiteness makes Australia an A Market, when it’s truly a C-D market,” Banks said. “Brazil is a MUCH more important market for music than australia lmao. (this is mostly because Australia has an an extreme dearth of internationally appetizing talent outside of Kylie minogue , INXS & AC/DC, {tame impala is just cheesy to me, and wolfmother is excellent – but clearly an American rock tribute band}.”
She continued, “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,” noting she thinks they have “actually created one of the most culturally stale white nations on the planet.”
Read Banks’ full posts below.
“Sidebar: I’m reading this article in the Guardian about the ever dwindling and insignificant Australian music industry and have SO MANY THOUGHTS AND COMMENTS, but the delusions of the Aussie music execs quoted in this article is f*ckkkng astonishing and making it clear to me how sheer jealousy, racism and desperation allowed @sweatitoutmusic to purposely sabotage a bonafide hit in lieu of their fragile fragile egos and DESPERATE attempts to try and steal my IP. The Australian music industry is so devoid of internationally appealing talent they literally harrased, threatened, menaced and corruptly stole my IP. Let’s take a deep dive.
the version of my song New Bottega, the Australians released as The final composition is actually a piss poor remix of my Master Track , and should not be titled ‘New Bottega’.
There’s no language stating that any ‘left over ideas’ do not belong to me. Because they essentially treated the fully mixed mastered single as a discard, when they had it in their possession the entire time, the song splits were not papered once done,
and they have nothing with my signature confirming ‘New Bottega’ as the song that qualifies the parameters of the initial contract.They left it as ‘TBD’ which was stupid on their part. So they basically denatured my intellectual property, cherry picked what they wanted from it and fraudulently presented it to the world AS the song EYE wrote. And they released it, so that is the only version of the song they have claim to. My Sony atv deal explicitly states that I am not allowed to assign control of my publishing/vocals etc to any entity. Again I was very f*cking sick when I signed the deal and really just signed it so They would stop calling me at 2am and let me rest. The fact that they are steadfast on trying to have ownership over something that is going to make them no money without my involvement is asinine. They fact that they are so obsessed with owning my vocals but adamant about treating me poorly and adamant about not investing in such a massive song (the tik tok stats and best of year end lists literally proved that the product works, what’s the point in changing it?) is literal stupidity. Whatever remix they released is not ‘New Bottega.’ So they don’t have the right to title their remix track as such. ‘New Bottega’ is my intellectual property, and time has proven that these aussies have zero clue how to market this song, absolutely no knowledge of the big business that is American female rap, or how to engage with Azealia Banks and leverage the power of her already established international fanbase to their advantage… here I am LITERALLY telling them how to get my fans excited- and they re taking it an insult.
For the record. ‘New Bottega’ by Azealia Banks Is a hiphop record. It is not a dance record. Categorizing it as a dance record was their first wrong marketing move. Clearly -There is a cultural dissonance here. HipHop is the most profitable genre of music in the world right now. EDM is f*cking dead For people so thirsty to try and own the rights to my vocals , you’d THINK they had some huge money play to go along with all of the empty and baseless threats to sue me. (lmao, can’t sue me for not participating in promoting garbage.) if they were good crooks – they would have at least kept their racism under wraps long enough to have taken my photo and shot a video to have assets to promote their bullshit with) For all of the dsp c*cksucking @sweatitoutmusic did in effort to try and prove to me that their marketing strategy was better than mine – registering it as a dance song Was the most anti-algorithmic sh*t an algorithm dickrider could have done. F*cking stupidity.
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, I don’t think they realize how unimportant they are as far as music culture goes because they’re deluded with the idea that their whiteness makes Australia an A Market, when it’s truly a C-D market. Brazil is a MUCH more important market for music than australia lmao. (this is mostly because Australia has an an extreme dearth of internationally appetizing talent outside of Kylie minogue , INXS & AC/DC, {tame impala is just cheesy to me, and wolfmother is excellent – but clearly an American rock tribute band}
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. Could be do to with it being geographically so out of the way and how aggressive, barbaric, oppressive and violent they have been in regards to the very existence of native black peoples that they’ve actually systematically stomped out their country’s own ability to develop its own music/arts culture – to instead look to England and the USA for ideas to regurgitate not realizing that the reason the Australian music industry and Australian culture is so trash is BECAUSE of their country’s historical post colonial obsession with I guess, trying to prove to England and the Monarchy that they -a legion of convicts/mentally insane social rejects – were in fact a proper white/Anglo-saxon society – using the massacre/ subjugation of black/indigenous peoples (manifest destiny bullshit) and theft of their land as a marker of national strength
But they have actually created one of the most culturally stale white nations on the planet.
The fact that these aussie music execs are COMPLETELY OVERLOOKING THE CORRELATION BETWEEN THE GOVERNMENTS PURPOSEFUL ETHNIC CLEANSING OF NATIVE PEOPLES AND THEIR INABILITY TO PRODUCE MUSIC ANYONE ANYWHERE CARES ABOUT IS F*CKING COMEDY .
Someone has GOT to tell the Australian music industry that Absolutely no one on earth takes it seriously. Like, they HAVE to understand how untalented/uncultured and unneeded they are to the greater global arts community, realize musical talent is just not in the gene pool, and redirect those funds to the aboriginal peoples of the continent and just pack their shit up and go back to Europe. LMAO. Y’all stomped all the blackness out of Australia – which is why your music exports suck and we don’t feel bad for you lmfaooooooo.”