Azealia Banks On 'Playboy' Cover, Talks Race, Religion And Others
Harlem native Azealia Banks showed her more daring side as she posed for famous men’s magazine “Playboy,” alongside the headline "Azealia Banks: Hip-Hop's Fierce Queen Is Ready To Roar." The outspoken rapper also sat with the mag in a wide-ranging interview on race, sex and religion.
The 23-year-old finally graced the cover of the adult magazine, boasting her bum while clad in leopard-print leotards, with a cat on top of her purple-dyed hair. She expressed her excitement as she posted the photo on her Twitter with the caption, “It’s finally here! My @Playboy issue hits newsstands this week. See a sneak peek at #AzealiaUncensored.” The photo shoot, done by veteran Austrian photographer and director Ellen von Unwerth, featured other seductive photos of the rapper, including one where her face was strapped into a cat mask while she was crouching behind a leopard-print couch and another where she covered the top half of her completely naked body with two cats. Von Unwerth, who worked with the likes of Kate Moss and Rihanna, described the shoot as a "nude and frisky pictorial that's sure to break the internet," Mirror reported. Azealia also revealed that Grace Jones and Naomi Campbell, who both appeared in the magazine, were two of her heroes who inspired her to do the shoot. She even said that she enjoyed getting naked and that posing for “Playboy” was a “no-brainer.”
The “Chasing Time” singer also picked up many touchy themes that she discussed at length in a profanity-filled interview with Playboy. Known for her no-holds-barred tweets, people always seem to see her as this black lady who is always ranting away in Twitter. Azealia tied the Twitter hate to race, saying that if it were a white person like “Royals” singer Lorde who talked about those things, people wouldn’t think she was angry. “If I have something to say, I get pushed into the corner," she shared. She also revealed that she admired Jay Z for not playing the “please accept me, white world” game, unlike Kanye West. Even if people are hating on her, she isn’t sorry for being loud and boisterous and she doesn’t play the game where she has to be the nonthreatening black person in the American society, Huffington Post reported.
Speaking of America, Azealia also revealed that she hated everything about the country, including fat white Americans. Moreover, people tell her that she is ignorant because she doesn’t speak proper English, but she believes that there is a piece of her that knows she’s not supposed to be speaking the language or worshipping Jesus Christ because it is unnatural for someone who was ripped from her land, customs and culture. She also gets upset when people tell her to “just make music” instead of expressing what’s on her mind. She hates having the need to explain herself because she believes that “black people need reparationsfor building this country” and that they deserve more respect.
Azealia also talked about religion and how she didn’t understand how someone could be an atheist. She related God with to a software with information large enough to fit a Google-sized data center and said that people cannot handle that much information. On the subject of her bisexuality, she shared that she just could not meet a man and want to sleep with him, out of the fear of getting any kind of sexually transmitted disease.
Lastly, she opened up to some moments of her childhood, like the time she had teacher she couldn’t stand when she was in second grade. The said teacher always put the black kids in the corner, which Azealia found extremely unfair. One day she wrote on her journal some profane thoughts on her teacher, which the latter read. Her mother was called in and was embarrassed because she used to say that “white people are of the devil” and that they should stay away from them. Azealia laughed as she shared that the teacher was afraid of her after the whole ordeal.
