Azealia Banks – 1991

After serving up a club smash with last year’s “212”, rapper/singer Azealia Bank came through this year with an ear-catching blend of hip-hop and house music on 1991, her short but sweet debut EP. This four-track effort showcases Banks’s talent for bold, spitfire rhymes that can reach impressive speeds (“Liquorice”). She’s also no slouch as a songstress. Backing Banks’ vocals are instrumentals by producers like Machinedrum (“Van Vogue”) and Lazy Jay (“212”) that, true to the EP title, feel like updates of house classics from the late 80’s and early 90’s.

While Banks mostly sticks to a self-aggrandizing semi-battle-rap style of rhyme, her wit and the length of this effort make that a very minor fault among the strengths of this promising release.

By Rafael Smith