After high-profile spats with everyone from Grimes and Elon Musk to Zayn Malik and Sarah Palin, this week Azealia Banks was at it again. An apparently straightforward flight to Ireland saw the hair-trigger New Yorker remove herself from the plane after an argument with an air attendant ended with her referring to “ugly” Irish women. One tearful confessional and a live triumph in Dublin later, she reignited the furore with a social media rant referring to “leprechauns”.
Unseemly as this is, it’s hard to reconcile the headline-grabbing enfant terrible with the grinning, uber-talented 27-year-old who has her Manchester audience roaring in approval. Backed by a drummer and DJ, and occasionally flanked by two dancers, she sings, dances, raps and displays enough charisma and stagecraft to put many a rival to shame. When she slowly takes off her jacket, the roar is so deafening you fear for the building.
She has just one proper album to her name (a second is due this year) but it’s hard not to suspect that while they have kept her in the spotlight, the spats – and perhaps not unrelated, her mental-health issues – have also prevented her becoming the superstar she should be. Here she croons like a jazz singer and delivers freestyle rap at blistering speed. When she unveils an a capella soul voice as big as Whitney Houston’s, she is a revelation.
A vibrant, eclectic setlist careers from Latin to lewd (“If your pussy is good, make some noise!”), sweet balladry to edgy electro-pop. Anna Wintour has a massive chorus. Pyrex Princess thrillingly combines eerie, ghostly music and Ramones-speed rapping. Heavy Metal and Reflective could somehow be simultaneously influenced by Nancy Sinatra, New York go-go and Nine Inch Nails. Best of all are the massive party bangers - The Big Big Beat, hit cunnilingus anthem 212 and the rest – which generate waves of Banks-style gyrations in the crowd, making the grin onstage spread even wider.
“I love you,” she coos sweetly, before sidestepping any damage to her bad-girl reputation: “Don’t quote me on that.”
• At Koko, London, tonight (sold out), and Electric Brixton, London, Sunday.
