Fri 2 Mar 2012
Azealia Banks Reflects on Growing Up in Harlem: “I Had Everything”
Posted by Matty U under Interviews[4] Comments
Growing up in the ghetto wasn’t exactly like living in the tough stereotypical ghetto conditions, according to Azealia Banks. The 20 year-old rapper told the New York Times that even though she was surrounded by a rough atmosphere, she lived a different ghetto lifestyle, fortunate enough to have toys, clothes and pets.
“We lived in Harlem just, like, at the beginning of its gentrification . . . but my mom had our apartment since she was 18, she worked a retail job, but she worked on commission, so she made like, maybe, 75 or $80,000 a year, but our rent was so cheap since it was, like, rent-controlled, so our rent was, like, $300 a month for a two-bedroom apartment, so we always had extra money. I grew up very spoiled . . . like I had everything: I had computers, I had video games, I had dress-up clothes, I had lipstick, I had heels — not like, actual heels, play heels — I had dolls, I had birds, I had hamsters — my mom did a really good job of keeping me stimulated.”
Read the more of the NYT feature after the jump.
Before moving to the U.K, to pursue her rap career, Banks also said that she lived a healthier ghetto lifestyle, being exposed to different habits and cultures outside her neighborhood.
““ ‘I’ve come from the ghetto and it’s really hard’ thing? Well, I came from the ghetto but it wasn’t hard for us, y’know what I mean? Because I lived on the block with kids who were, like, crack babies. I had other aunts and uncles who lived in other parts of Harlem, and I’d go with my cousins and we’d be out on the street, y’know . . . I had a healthy juxtaposition of, like, good and bad.”
You can read the full New York Times feature here.
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March 2nd, 2012 at 4:38 pm
Ahhhh, so that’s where my taxes go. Fucking animals.
March 2nd, 2012 at 6:41 pm
you don’t hear that very often living going usa to pursue hiphop career usually people go to usa for there career
and rapper tell there truth about not being broke
March 2nd, 2012 at 10:33 pm
She deserves way more love from hip hop heads. She’s mad nice.
March 2nd, 2012 at 11:21 pm
fuck that! rather the way her mom raised them in that rent control then some asshole trying to buy them out & get another black family out of their environment so some preppy college kid from the burbs can be all in there! they’re doing that all over NYC, so I applaud her mama! haa