- After coming off the blocks real fast and real hard, Azealia Banks has been teasing her debut full-length record for so long I'm surprised I was still relatively excited when it finally decided to rear its auspicious head from out of the blue. It seems like an age has gone by since she dropped her ball breaking debut EP two-and-a-half years ago. In that time Banks has parted ways with a handful of different labels due to their incompetence and decided to finally put the damn record out herself, albeit digitally only for the time being.

Broke With Expensive Taste is the culmination of years of frustration and false starts. A record that by all accounts should be obsolete on arrival but instead is a welcomed breath of fresh air. A confident, stylish record from a compelling and talented female emcee in a world still chock-a-block with dongs. It puzzles my mind how one could fail to successfully market such a complete and interesting product to the point at which an artist's options are to sit on theit hands or pack up their shit and go their own way. If a wonderful freak like Missy Elliott can sell -like- eight million units, Banks should at least be able to get her record pressed.

Azealia Banks isn’t afraid to mix it up on her full-length debut, employing nearly as many producers as there are tracks: which at sixteen songs deep there was always the risk of that the resulting record is a jumbled mess. Luckily for Banks she’s avoided any one, cliched sound, bouncing sonically all over the musical map with ease. Despite the unquestionably odd and out of place cover of Ariel Pink’s recent surf rock jam Nude Beach A Go-Go, there are very few missteps during the hour-plus runtime. The record is a majestic mix of throwback '90’s dance culture, rap's modern love affair with the MPC and a thick splattering of chunky bass.

Broke With Expensive Taste quickly proves itself to be an eclectic and vibrant rap record from a young lady that very nearly fell of the face of the earth before clawing her way back, grabbing life by the balls and then ripping those balls right off and shoving them right down life's throat. In layman's terms this record is well worth the wait and a more than worthy hip hop footnote in a year that could have used a handful more just like it. Azealia Banks is not going to go away quietly.

- Jay Edwards.