NEWS: Weave Advocates Azealia Banks x Lady Gaga Team Up

Azealia experiments with hair accessorising, Liquorice

Earlier this week at the GQ Men of the Year Awards capped by Capital FM, Azealia Banks confirmed a collaboration with pop sensation Lady Gaga that may make the latter’s ARTPOP album.

I worked on a song for her. I don’t know if it will make her record. I hope it will, but we’ll wait and see. 

Azealia is somewhat of a lyrical athlete: rapid and ready to run beats she has in firm control, ad-libs that serve as limbering up to shoot sharp tongued raps. A prolific musician with fashion thirst Gods by her side - aspects Gaga is no stranger to. Banks has also recently secured a limited edition Yung Rapunxel lipstick with M.A.C. featured in her 1991 video:

Graeme Virtue for The Guardian purports AB as something of the Disney princess, Fantasea mixtape

Yung Rapunxel and Mother Monster, respectively

Nodding to her alias with further references in her tour The Mermaid Ball, Banks assures she would make a fitting weave apprentice to the sisterhood of bastardised Disney acts, giving spearheaders Gaga and Nicki Minaj a run for their money. Regularly donning and Tweeting hair pieces at least 30 inches, the young Harlemite weave enthusiast that frequently odes hair maintenance seeks to elongate and dip dye as a mark of status where Gaga re-imagines weave concepts altogether. Sealing the unknown track on ARTPOP’s 2013 release will boost Banks into further standing in fashion with Gaga’s co-sign. Anyone else anticipating the charted proof and weave rivalry between these two?

REVIEW: Watch The Throne, The Divine Right of Kings

Righteous album art, Watch the Throne

The announcement of Jay-Z and Kanye West's European Watch the Throne Tour and acquiring tickets has given me the push to bump the album review I wrote in August, when it was released. It's done very well, mainly because they figured out a way to amp listeners up while also discussing status issues. Remember when Kanye would frequently go on ostentatious Twitter rants? Turns out that was relevant and not the musings of a mad man without a Publicist. Note: Niggas in Paris is rinsed, but rightly so. That Mary-Kate & Ashley pun is tough, but when Kanye asserts:

What’s Gucci my nigga?/What’s Louis my killa?/What’s drugs my dealer?/What’s that jacket, Margiela? 

He is performing two jobs. On one hand, he's saluting the hood. On the other, he references aspects of luxe life in a crescendo as he graduates into higher status; second in command to Jay-Z. It's an identity game where he almost says recognise me, hood to Hollywood. During his early College Dropout days Kanye's extent of fashion awareness was limited to Louis Vuitton. A bit Mickey Mouse, he used to go by Louis Vuitton Don. But he's developed, and he wants us to know work ethic has him able to identify and stunt in Maison Martin Margiela. Heavy is the head that wears the crown. Check it out:

Jay-Z & Kanye West perform Niggas in Paris over 3 times @ London 02

In a genre where flossing remains prominent, razzle dazzle is a great strategy for a rap release. Wrapped in a sparkling gold album cover with tag-team rhymes in between extended king metaphors, the  conflations of greatness that classifies Jay-Z and Kanye West’s Watch The Throne bedazzles listeners into an examination of their rap Kingdom. Moving from mature insights into material wealth (Gotta Have It) and justified bragging rights (Niggas in Paris), to a humanised inspection of their status as rap Gods introduced by 'New Day', the pair crush anticipations of an anticlimactic album laced in currency rhymes by driving their regal theme home: ‘I tried to teach niggas how to be kings’ (Why I Love You). Acting as lyrical instructors on how to "crawl before you ball", Carter and West claim authority, asserting that we watch and learn and prove that they are befitting kings by consistently offering creative conceptual raps, fulfilling their duties. Bow down.