Broke With Expensive Taste

On her debut album, Azealia Banks has established herself as a brash and crude personality both on and off record, and she’s complemented it with a competent execution of a bold artistic vision.

There are no 'sound-

Her complete dominance over the sonic space of her debut reinforces Broke With Expensive Taste as a product singularly of her vision.

Her taste--for beats at least--isn't that expensive, but is certainly sophisticated, perhaps pointedly so. [Jan 2015, p.74]

The 16-song record (some previously released) never feels bloated: the tracks could be love letters by the Harlem native to all the cultures jamming in the Big Apple.

It’s a kaleidoscope of sounds that feels like a best of instead of a debut. It’s jarringly airy, flitting about and flouting conventions at every turn, and it’s sometimes so steeped in it’s 90s house past that it undermines its own velocity.

Most of all, she understands rhythms--house, trap, soul, techno, Latin--and she slings rhymes and melodies that fully engage them.

Banks has managed to pull off a minor miracle, as Broke With Expensive Taste is an artistic success as well as a strategic one.

Broke With Expensive Taste glides through all of these, just like the faithful 1 train sampled on "Desperado". Both album and the artist revel in the freedom of a New York City where divisions between these sounds and scenes have ever so slowly ceased to exist.

Banks immerses herself in 90s nostalgia, spitting darkly and sharply over tracks full of elements of UK garage, deep house and trap (an aggressive strain of hip-hop).

For an album that’s seemingly been in turnaround for so long, Broke sounds very much of the moment.

Broke With Expensive Taste is a project dripping in confidence, class, bursts of brilliance, and personality.

BWET is a fascinating starting point, as she can spit complex rhyme patterns with ease. The hope is that this can progress into something deeper, but as things stand she's still a pleasure to listen to.

Taken as a whole--and heard loudly and with great focus--it confirms Banks' promise, and her great reflexes in collaboration.

Broke is an pleasant surprise. [Feb 2015, p.73]

This just might be the year's boldest release.

It may well wander all over the place and sound in need of a firm guiding hand at times, but it also contains some genuinely inventive and thrilling pop music.

It’s schizophrenic and really quite silly in places, Broke is never less than entirely entertaining.

As wildly disparate as it is, with songs culled from a three-year career and innumerable influences, Broke With Expensive Taste is a suitable mission statement from an artist hoping to make an impact.

The missteps are few, but grave: on "Gimme a Chance," she transitions from bouncy rap to full-blown salsa, complete with Spanish singing, while the retro surf-pop of the Ariel Pink-produced "Nude Beach a Go-Go" confounds. And yet, both merely amplify how creatively combative Banks can be--especially when she focuses that energy into her music.