“Why procrastinate, girl?” sang Azealia Banks in 2011. “You’ve got a lot but you just waste all yours and they’ll forget your name soon.”

Three years on, the hook of her breakthrough single 212 has come to sound more like a self-fulfilling prophecy than the self-motivation of a hungry young artist. In those three years, Banks has started more Twitter feuds than she has released official songs, and burned bridges – with labels, producers and fellow artists – with wilful abandon. In an age when pop stars are judged as much for their promo campaigns and ability to play the industry game as for their actual music, this kind of behaviour was deemed unforgivable, and her descent to punchline status inevitable. Last week, with no warning, Banks self-released the debut album that was meant to be her coronation as a major force in pop. Is there anyone left to care? Does that matter?

Broke With Expensive Taste is something of a vindication for Banks, who has long attributed its non-existence to her former label’s refusal to release music it deemed too uncommercial. But Universal were probably right: Broke With Expensive Taste is a niche concern, not an album designed to set the charts alight. Banks makes few overtures to popular trends. Instead, she doubles down on experimenting within her field of interest: off-kilter underground club music paired with opulent fashion-inspired imagery.



Throughout, Banks luxuriates in sound and language. “Isis Queen, the icy witch, winter fresh in that whitey Benz,” she purrs on Ice Princess, savouring the sibilance on her tongue. Subject matter is of less importance to Banks than evocative visual imagery or the phonetic satisfaction of nonsense wordplay; every time she breaks into her trademark assonance-heavy rapping, there’s an injection of energy into the track. Not that the music isn’t already evocative. Banks has long displayed a keen ear for a beat, and the selection she has curated for Broke With Expensive Taste almost threatens to overshadow her.

Perhaps surprisingly, little is as rowdy as 212 might have suggested, other than the fast and furious rave-up Heavy Metal and Reflective and the abrasive industrial clatter of Yung Rapunxel. Instead, the dominant mood is tactile and beguiling – though always careful to keep things moving at dancefloor tempo rather than sinking into the hazy pitfalls of indie R&B. Opener Idle Delilah, produced by Pearson Sound, contains xylophones, cut-up garage vocals, intricate rhythms, an invitingly warm bassline and a distorted guitar coda. UK garage legend MJ Cole’s house piano and rippling beats are extremely welcome on the delectable Desperado. The album’s closing pair, Miss Amor and Miss Camaraderie, find Lone bringing out some of his best ideas for Banks: martial tattoos, tropical synths, unexpected horn outros. Throughout the album, songs shapeshift into unexpected forms: the Apache-esque throwback Gimme a Chance gives way to a salsa breakdown as Banks switches into Spanish.



While Broke With Expensive Taste’s overarching direction is a thrill, its execution doesn’t always match up. Banks is fantastic at creating memorable parts of songs, less good at constructing memorable songs; while her spontaneity means the album avoids the problems of overthinking, there’s a casualness about this project – from the way in which Banks rides her beats to the haphazard sequencing – that means it comes off more like a superior mixtape than a tightly crafted album. Songs such as BBD and Luxury putter aimlessly; a foray into indie with the Ariel Pink cover Nude Beach a-Go-Go is a terrible idea on every level. Even more of an issue is the gulf between Banks’s rapping and singing skills. The controlled, purse-lipped charisma of the former gives way to out-of-character, momentum-halting diffidence when it comes to the latter, and it doesn’t help that Banks is largely unable to pen a strong vocal melody: too many times, you realise awkwardly that what you’d assumed to be an ad-lib is meant to be a song’s hook.



Broke With Expensive Taste’s appearance just four months after she extricated herself from her much-hated deal with Universal is one in the eye for sceptics who had assumed Banks had been too lazy or feuded with too many producers to finish the album. More importantly, the music on display demonstrates exactly why people got excited about her in the first place. If there’s a cautionary tale here, it’s not to do with tut-tutting about Banks’ “unprofessionalism” as if she should be judged by the values of the office. It’s to do with the misguided expectations made of her in the first place. To her credit, Banks has ducked under those and made the album she wanted to make on her own terms. So what if she hasn’t maximised her profitability in the pop marketplace?