Hi, and hello, everyone. Anthony Fantano here, the internet's busiest music nerd – I hope you're doing well.

It's time to talk about one of my least favorite people walking the planet Earth. That would be Ms. Azealia Banks, someone who you know I really don't enjoy thinking about in any way, shape, or form, because despite the fact that she repeatedly posts controversial tweet after controversial tweet on the internet every year, I more or less don't really have much of anything to say about her at this point, especially since on this channel, we primarily cover music and music-related things.

It's been years since Azealia Banks has been at all relevant in the music sphere in any way, shape, or form. She obviously broke into the industry with the hit song "212", eventually did get to a point where she was able to follow that up with a full-length debut album. Depending on who you talk to, it's an overwhelmingly inconsistent snoozer or a great, impressive release. Clearly, some people were appreciating what she was doing on that record.

But even with that album getting the somewhat positive response it did from some fans, that album was the end of the line for Azealia's music career anyway, because by that point, she had already beefed with so many notable and important figures in in the industry, burned so many bridges, made herself a complete pariah in so many ways that there would truly be no way to actually drop a good, solid, successful follow-up album.

This is all truly a shame because I will admit, Azealia did have a real shot of making some huge waves in the world of music beyond her early stuff. And while, sure, it is likely that maybe there's a mental health issue, a struggle going on there that prevents her from going about various public statements with a little bit of tact.

Regardless, though, effectively being turned into a leper in the music community has put Azealia in a position where all she really can do to gain any public attention is essentially just continue engaging in the hateful, ridiculous, over-the-top internet baiting that put her in hot water and ended her career in the first place. What hot button issues she is relentlessly going at has really depended on the time period that we're in.

But now that we're in this current pro-Nazi era on Elon Musk's formerly Twitter, now 𝕏, if you've got a blue checkmark on there, you can get paid for all the engagement you're getting off of your terrible, viral, awful, offensive tweets. Ms. Banks has gone fully sicko mode, endlessly tumbling down not only the far-right MAGA rabbit hole, but also a bunch of hate and bigotry toward the gay community, the LGBTQ community in general, especially trans people. And also for some reason, she just can't believe that the genocide in Palestine currently is a thing. She repeatedly posts on her Twitter page that the videos and the images coming out of there look like AI.

But as recently as the other day, Ms. Banks has really, truly, honestly outdone herself and has posted and written what I think is maybe the worst tweet of all time. I'm going to read it to you.

Okay, I'm going to interrupt this statement just to add my own thoughts and criticisms here. But what I find funny off the bat is Azealia Banks is going to a length here to defend Donald Trump, that even some of his most hardcore fans and all the right-wing talking heads on social media, they won't even touch this rail. She's coming right out and saying, "Yeah, all those 14-year-olds, maybe younger, he could have been doing things with back in the 1990s. That most definitely happened. It happened." And in her opinion, it's fine. That's just the way things were at the time.

I'm sorry that in your own head now, for some reason, you want to rationalize what happened with your grandmother and what happened with you. At this point, that just makes life easier to live rather than really reckoning with the power dynamics and the fact that you were taken advantage of by these older men.

I understand why you want to see it this way, but this is not normal. This is not okay. Even if you can vividly remember that back in your own head at the age of 15, this was something that you were interested in. You're still a child. You're still a child. You're too young and fucking clueless and inexperienced to fully understand understand the gravity of the situation. Being 15 and accepting or having to contend with the physical advances of a 40-year-old is wrong.

This is like one of those unfortunate, narcissistic, solipsistic points of view that some people lock themselves into where they think their life experience is like something everybody else has also experienced. People who haven't had the same experience as you have, they're the ones who are the freaks. And look, I'm not even trying to force my own experience here onto Azealia. I'm just saying, statistically speaking, most 15-year-olds are not going about sleeping with 40-year-olds.

Okay, this is just insane. I feel crazy that I even have to say any of this. "I'm honestly not surprised or mad at Trump for getting some 15-year-old because I know those were the times. Good night USA for fucking ever. Now, if he was effing a 10-year-old, we have a problem. But if the girls were 13, who cares? Move on." Why do those three years make a difference? Are you kidding me? I'm sorry. Like, hot take here, but trying to sleep with a 13-year-old just as bad as trying to sleep with a 10-year-old. They're both bad. They're both wrong. They're both just the same amount of bad. They're both terrible. Don't do that.

And this tweet is so gross and heinous and disgusting in and of itself. To dissect it, it makes my stomach churn. But in the wake of this tweet, for hours, Ms. Banks continued tweeting, defending this position. And I barely even want to go over these tweets.

I mean, there's other stuff she says that's even worse. Ethically, I just don't want to even dive into it because it's so plainly wrong. She even attempts to defend herself in a series of Twitter videos where she's recording them from what looks like the bathtub. And all she does is just spout the same bullshit, but does so in a calming tone with what she thinks is a logical inflection to make it sound like everything I'm saying is very deeply reasoned, and I've put a lot of thought into it, and I'm operating on a philosophical level that you just can't comprehend. But I've made some genius observations about the political state of the country since 2014 that all of you filthy know nothings haven't perceived, but I have. So let me explain them to you.

"I would like to remind you guys that Donald Trump was a Democrat. He was a Democrat when all of those things were happening. I would also like to make very clear and realistic to you just about the reality of the human experience. You get me? I mean, wherever there are humans, there's going to be rape, there's going to be murder, there's going to be filth, there's going to be war, there's going to be poverty, there's going to be disease, there's going to be opulence, there's going to be beauty, there's going to be wealth. These are all parts. It's just constant parts of the human condition." - Azealia Banks

And yeah, this is just a cover for her being a huge fucking idiot because she knows manipulating her followers into thinking that what she's saying is just above the fray in some way is pretty much the only way she can salvage this situation. But her dog shit arguments essentially come down to whatever people are going to be, just bad stuff and disease and rape and so on and so forth is going to happen because that's just a thing that happens with people, and that's just a people thing wherever people be. Even if there are laws and a judicial system that tries to enact some semblance of order or decorum, like we should just accept that these bad things are happening anyway because just people do them.

This is like when somebody finds out about nihilism for the first time and they think they're smart because of it. Yeah, nothing means anything, and bad stuff is going to happen anyway, whether I care or try or not. When you adopt that dog shit mindset, anybody who cares about anything in your vicinity it just reads to you as virtue signaling because you can't possibly comprehend anybody actually caring about something. When no, in actuality, I think your average person doesn't want to see children deal with any physical or sexual abuse. That just seems really wrong and bad. So obviously and clearly wrong and bad that I don't even feel like I'm taking a moral stance saying this. The incorrectness of that is as to me as the sun coming up in the morning.

But unfortunately, I feel like a lot of people's supposed judgments are clouded by the fact that you can go online and just fucking say anything for internet clout, man. You could say the worst, most dog shit, most offensive, most awful, most wrong takes you can think of and get Twitter money off of it, which is like, insane. Might be a bit of a hot take, but I feel like monetized pro-pedophilia posts is like a market failure.

But yeah, I don't really know what else to say. Azealia Banks continues to be one of the biggest and most disappointing failures, not even of the music industry, but of humanity, because you had so much potential, just so much capacity to just make and create a really impressive and fun music career. You could have been the queen of hip house from the moment 212 dropped, going forward into the next 10 years.

But instead, you decided to be a massive fucking loser, and now you're reduced to a filthy, disgusting little worm who is denying genocide and promoting sex with 13-year-olds. Gross. Disgusting. I'm going to leave that there. Over here next to my head is another video that you can check out. Hit that up or the link to subscribe to the channel. Anthony Fantano, never, ever again, Azalea Banks.