Hostname: page-component-cd9895bd7-7cvxr Total loading time: 0 Render date: 2024-12-25T15:04:19.725Z Has data issue: false hasContentIssue false
  • English
  • Français

Azealia Banks: ‘Chasing Time’, erotics, and body politics

Published online by Cambridge University Press:  13 April 2018

Kai Arne Hansen  and
Stan Hawkins
Kai Arne Hansen
Affiliation:
Department of Musicology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway E-mail: [email protected] and [email protected]
Stan Hawkins
Affiliation:
Department of Musicology, University of Oslo, Oslo, Norway E-mail: [email protected] and [email protected]
Get access Rights & Permissions [Opens in a new window]

Abstract

During the 2010s a new generation of queer hip hop artists emerged, providing an opportunity to engage with a set of politics defined by art, fashion, lyrics and music. A leading proponent of this movement was Azealia Banks, the controversial rapper, artist and actress from New York. This study instigates a critical investigation of her performance strategies in the track and video, ‘Chasing Time’ (2014), offering up various perspectives that probe into queer agency. It is suggested that techniques of sonic styling necessitate a consideration of subjectivity alongside genre and style. Employing audiovisual methods of analysis, we reflect on the relationship between gendered subjectivity and modalities of queerness as a means for demonstrating how aesthetics are staged and aligned to advanced techniques of production. It is argued that the phenomenon of eroticised agency, through hyperembodied display, is central to understanding body politics. This article opens a space for problematising issues of black female subjectivity in a genre that is traditionally relegated to the male domain.

Type
Articles
Information
Popular Music , Volume 37 , Issue 2 , May 2018 , pp. 157 - 174
Copyright
Copyright © Cambridge University Press 2018 

Access options

Get access to the full version of this content by using one of the access options below. (Log in options will check for institutional or personal access. Content may require purchase if you do not have access.)

References

Auslander, P. 2006. ‘The performativity of performance documentation’, Performing Arts Journal, 28/3, pp. 1–10Google Scholar
Burns, Lori. 2010. ‘Vocal authority and listener engagement: musical and narrative expressive strategies in the songs of female pop-rock artists, 1993–1995’, in Sounding Out Pop: Analytical Essays in Popular Music, ed. Spicer, M. and Covach, J. (Ann Arbor, MI, University of Michigan Press)Google Scholar
Butler, Judith. 1993. ‘Endangered/endangering: schematic racism and white paranoia’, in Reading Rodney King, Reading Urban Uprising, ed. Gooding-Williams, R. (New York, Routledge)Google Scholar
Djupvik, M.B. 2014. ‘Welcome to the candy shop: conflicting representations of black masculinity’, Popular Music, 33/2, pp. 209–24Google Scholar
Emerson, R. A. 2002. ‘“Where my girls at?” Negotiating black womanhood in music videos’, Gender and Society, 16/1, pp. 115–35.Google Scholar
Ferguson, R. 2004. Aberrations in Black: Toward a Queer of Color Critique (Minneapolis, MN, University of Minnesota Press.)Google Scholar
Halberstam, J. 2005. In a Queer Time and Place: Transgender Bodies, Subcultural Lives (New York, New York University Press)Google Scholar
Hansen, K. A. 2017. ‘Empowered or objectified? Personal narrative and audiovisual aesthetics in Beyoncé’s Partition’, Popular Music and Society, 40/2, pp. 164–80Google Scholar
Haugen, J. D. 2003. ‘“Unladylike divas”: language, gender, and female gangsta rappers’, Popular Music and Society 26/4, pp. 429–44Google Scholar
Hawkins, S. 2004. ‘Dragging out camp: narrative agendas in Madonna's musical production’, in Madonna's Drowned Worlds, ed. Fouz-Hernández, S. and Jarman-Ives, F. (Aldershot, Ashgate), pp. 3–21Google Scholar
Hawkins, S. 2013. ‘Aesthetics and hyperembodiment in pop videos: Rihanna's “Umbrella”’, in The Oxford Handbook of New Audiovisual Aesthetics, ed. Richardson, J., Gorbman, C. and Vernallis, C. (Oxford, Oxford University Press), pp. 466–82Google Scholar
Hawkins, S. 2016. Queerness in Pop Music: Aesthetics, Gender Norms, and Temporality (New York, Routledge)Google Scholar
Hawkins, S. (ed.) 2017. The Routledge Research Companion to Popular Music and Gender (New York, Routledge)Google Scholar
Hawkins, S., and Richardson, J. 2007. ‘Remodeling Britney Spears: matters of intoxication and mediation’, Popular Music and Society, 30/5, pp. 605–29Google Scholar
James, R. 2008. ‘“Robo-diva R&B”: aesthetics, politics, and black female robots in contemporary popular music’, Journal of Popular Music Studies, 20/4, pp. 402–23Google Scholar
Jarman-Ivens, F. 2006. ‘Queer(ing) masculinities in heterosexist rap music’, in Queering the Popular Pitch, ed. Whiteley, S. and Rycenga, J. (New York, Routledge)Google Scholar
Jarman-Ivens, F. 2009. ‘Notes on musical camp’, in The Ashgate Research Companion to Popular Musicology, ed. Scott, Derek B. (Farnham: Ashgate)Google Scholar
Korsmeyer, C. 2004. Gender and Aesthetics: An Introduction (London: Routledge)Google Scholar
Krims, A. 2000. Rap Music and the Poetics of Identity (Cambridge: Cambridge University Press)Google Scholar
Leibetseder, D. 2012. Queer Tracks: Subversive Strategies in Rock and Pop Music (Farnham: Ashgate)Google Scholar
Moore, A.F. 2012. Song Means: Analysing and Interpreting Recorded Popular Song (Farnham: Ashgate)Google Scholar
Muñoz, J.E. 2009. Cruising Utopia: The Then and There of Queer Futurity (New York, New York University Press)Google Scholar
Oware, M. 2009. ‘A “man's woman”? Contradictory messages in the songs of female rappers, 1992–2000’, Journal of Black Studies, 39/5, pp. 786–802Google Scholar
Perko, G. 2005. Queer Theorien: Etische, Politische und Logische Dimensionen Plural-Queren Denkens (Cologne: Papy Rossa)Google Scholar
Railton, D., and Watson, P. 2011. Music Video and the Politics of Representation (Edinburgh: Edinburgh University Press)Google Scholar
Roberts, R. 1991. ‘Music videos, performance and resistance: female rappers’, The Journal of Popular Culture, 25/2, pp. 141–52Google Scholar
Rose, T. 2008. The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop (New York, Basic Books)Google Scholar
Scott, D.B. 2003. From the Erotic to the Demonic: On Critical Musicology (Oxford: Oxford University Press)Google Scholar
Smith, M.R. 2014. ‘“Or a real, real bad lesbian”: Nicki Minaj and the acknowledgement of queer desire in hip-hop culture’, Popular Music and Society, 37/3, pp. 360–70Google Scholar
Sontag, S. 1964 (1990). ‘Notes on camp’, in Against Interpretation and Other Essays (New York, Anchor)Google Scholar
Weitzer, R., and Kubrin, C.E. 2009. ‘Misogyny in rap music: a content analysis of prevalence and meanings’, Men and Masculinities, 12/1, pp. 3–29Google Scholar
Willis, D., and Williams, C. 2002. The Black Female Body: A Photographic History (Philadelphia, PA, Temple University Press)Google Scholar