Recently, US musician Azealia Banks came under heavy backlash after making various racist comments about BLACKPINK’s Lisa and K-pop artists in general.
In particular, back on March 1, when a fan asked if she had any thoughts on Lisa’s newly-released album, “Alter Ego”, Azealia Banks answered, “I don’t listen to Kpop”. While liking a song or a genre is often a matter of personal choice, many found issue with such a statement, finding it to carry racist undertones.
Specifically, in the cast of Lisa, her whole album is in English, not Korean, and the female idol herself is from Thailand, not Korea. Even the featuring artists are not Korean, making it hard to lump her new album into the term “K-pop”. To many, this means that Azealia Banks is disregarding Lisa’s identity all together simply because she doesn’t like K-pop artists.
Additionally, when such issues were raised by fans, Azealia Banks not only refused to correct her initial statements, but also made demeaning comments about K-pop artists in general, calling them “garbage”.
“Sidebar: how the fuck are all these garbage k-pop stars getting all this love from notoriously racist European fashion houses before the plethora of hiphop artists who have been showing love, driving their sales and immortalizing them in song for the last three decades?” the musician wrote, adding, “Especially when these k-pop artists are largely making crappy facsimile urban Americana hip-hop music? Do they not understand that the influence begins and ends with Black America lmao?”
Sidebar: how the fuck are all these garbage k-pop stars getting all this love from notoriously racist European fashion houses before the plethora of hiphop artists who have been showing love, driving their sales and immortalizing them in song for the last three decades?
— Azealia Banks (@azealiaslacewig) March 1, 2025
Azealia Banks then also went on a tangent, saying that “Fashion + Europeanism as a joint package is on a steep decline” due to the rise of Asian influences in culture, adding “The end of an era is VERY near and European Fashion + Beauty is really losing the culture war.”
All these comments led to accusations of Banks being racist and xenophobic with criticism directed at her flooding in the quotes.