On a Tuesday evening in September, on the packed floor of ‘stylus’ in the University of Leeds, I found myself dancing for over two hours to a DJ called Kornél Kovács. He was amazing; he knew his audience well, playing deep cut tracks from dance and electronic icons of the last few years like SOPHIE, LSDXOXO and Miguel Angeles. However, we weren’t there for him. He was filling time, trying to quell the audience’s impatience at the third stop on Azealia Banks’ UK tour. 

In a recent tweet, Banks described Kornél as her favourite artist, saying: ‘one day I was tripping on shrooms and @KornelKovacs’ music came on shuffle. I took a deeper dive and spent 18 hours listening to his entire discography, then immediately booked a flight to Stockholm the next day just to shake his hand and see If he was real’. 

Azealia Banks is an artist you wait for. She does what she wants when she wants to, and when she doesn’t want to, she’ll let you know. Her artistic career has been accented by controversy, scandal and beef, and her fans love her for it. She is undeniably a powerful force in dance, house, and rap, combining witty hooks and lyrics with dynamic vocal skill. 

By the time Banks came out, the only things on stage, beside her, was a DJ table and new DJ, with a screen behind her playing a revolving slide show of animatics. A clam holding a pearl inscribed with ‘AB’, a collection of blue and white shells, a black and white British flag and a graphic simply reading ‘Azealia Banks’. 

She spoke to members of the audience between songs, asking us which song we wanted to hear next. She sang and rapped over the track, providing improvised riffs and lines in the instrumental sections. She stopped for a while to drink water and have a breather. She asked the front row over the mic to reposition the air conditioner in front of her. 

She seemed to argue with the DJ, rolling her eyes as he played the wrong track, putting her thumb down when he messed up a transition, brushing past him and standing behind the decks to choose her own track. 

The set was delightfully intimate and stripped back. Tickets were cheap, so you didn’t feel like you had been swindled by the low production aspects of the show. It was everything you expected an Azealia Banks gig to be: lazy, messy, sexy, loud, angry and thrilling. 

When you see an artist perform live, especially an artist you have a relationship with, you want to hear the tracks you love, feel connected to the performer, and have fun. If the artist is unsigned, independent, or only on a short tour, why should they bring a set, backup dancers or tech? If you love their work and they have the skills, their talent should be able to speak for itself, and Azealia Banks’s certainly did.