- [Charles] This was not one of my first questions,
but I have to ask, what's with the doll?
- What do you mean, what's with her?
- [Charles] What's her backstory, what's her name?
Can you introduce her to people who don't know who she is?
- She's not, she's really just here.
She's not supposed to be here, I just happen to have her.
Like, if the Uber takes off with all of my stuff,
he's gonna not take off with this doll.
(Anna Wintour by Azealia Banks)
♪ I needed love ♪
♪ Now I feel in love, babe, everywhere you are ♪
- [Charles] You mentioned that Anna Wintour
is about finding yourself and finding God.
Can you describe the moment you realized you found God?
- I've had that moment so many times,
and every time I have the moment,
it's bigger than the last time I had the moment.
So it's kind of not something that I can really,
or that I want to really define.
I think if I make a definitive statement about it,
then I'll stop finding it, you know?
I'll kind of cut myself off from it.
- [Charles] What is it about Anna Wintour
the person that made you want to make a song
that has her name in the title?
- The reason I wanted to call the song Anna Wintour,
was actually because the beat
was a remix of my song Ice Princess
from Broke With Expensive Taste.
♪ Colder than December ♪
♪ My diamonds on Anna Wintour ♪
♪ So that's fly ice in my life ♪
So, he took that part from Ice Princess
and put this beat under it.
And before I added my song to the beat,
it was really just, like, a bunch of vamping:
♪ Anna Wintour (beatboxing) ♪
♪ Let me finish (beatboxing) ♪
♪ Anna Wintour (beatboxing) ♪
It really informed my song.
And since the whole tone of this song Ice Princess
was about being, like, you know, just this cold,
frigid person who doesn't need anyone's help,
I kind of wanted to take this one
and make it like, almost as if it mimics the end of the
Ice Princess video,
because all of that rainbow shit that I'm, like,
killing in the Ice Princess video is love.
I know, I look like a fucking weirdo
with glitter on my face, and I'm like, "Ahhh, love."
But, all of the rainbow stuff I was killing
in the Ice Princess video was supposed to be
love entering my frozen kingdom.
And, I think it just kind of naturally wrote itself.
Like, you know, like, the pieces were just there.
Anna Wintour, Ice Princes,
cold-hearted girl, she finally finds love,
boom, boom, boom, here we are.
- [Charles] Do you actually feel
like you're Anna Wintour?
Or is that just a character or a persona?
- Of course I'm Anna Wintour.
Of course, of course, I'm singing
from my heart in that song.
- [Charles] And then, I was reading that
you were envisioning that Mel B from the Spice Girls,
or even somebody like Nicki Minaj,
like, you were envisioning them for this song.
- Mmhmm.
- [Charles] What was it about those two that
you could see them on the song?
- Just what I heard, you know?
It wasn't like an obvious,
"Oh, okay, I'm gonna put Nicki Minaj
"on a track and like blow up," sort of thing.
It was kinda just like, hmmm,
I can hear these two people here.
The Mel B thing came about because
when I was writing the part, I actually
had a friend of mine at home,
and I was bouncing the ideas off of him,
and I was just, you know, screaming the part at him.
And he goes, "Ooooo, that sounds like Scary Spice.
"You should get Scary Spice on there."
And that's where the idea came from,
but, you know.
- [Charles] I couldn't tell
if this was a joke or not,
but did Anna really call to say she loved the song?
- Oh no, of course not.
I don't think she would even if she did like the song.
- [Charles] You make sure to mention
how Stacie Orrico influenced Anna Wintour.
What is it about her debut album that you fell in love with?
- I like those super-carefully crafted
Christian pop pop songs,
that kind of like, skirt the lines of a love song
and like a gospel song.
- [Charles] Speaking of genre,
you make sure to classify Anna Wintour
as a dance pop hip-hop song,
and it sounds very house-influenced.
Do you ever feel more accepted
in that dance world, pop world, rather than hip-hop?
- I'm not sure, because it changes every time, you know?
The rules, these unwritten rules of hip-hop
change every week.
- [Charles] Did you look to anybody
from the past, to be like, "This is how
"I'm going to attack this beat"?
- Chaka, I think a lot of the music
my mom played when I was a kid
kind of influenced me subconsciously as a child,
and then once I became an artist,
it all just kind of like, started to,
like, "Ahhh, I remember that. I remember how to do that.
"I've heard that on repeat a million times."
I definitely thank my mother for
always having a lot of different kinds of music around me.
- [Charles] On Instagram you said,
"Anna Wintour is going to be the
"gay wedding anthem of summer 2018.
"I can just imagine everyone walking down the aisle
"to this joint!"
When you were creating this song,
did you have it in your mind that you wanted
to appeal to your LGBTQ fanbase?
- No.
It just kind of turned out to be that
after the song was done.
- [Charles] You classify your music as Sea Punk,
and obviously the mermaid is
a running motif throughout your music.
What is Sea Punk for people who don't know?
- To me, it's like a time capsule.
It's like a theme and like a time and a place
that kind of just moves along with the people
who were kind of, like, the pioneers of it, like,
so all these Tumblr kids and all these whatever,
they'll, like, argue, they'll be like,
"Azealia Banks didn't invent Sea Punk,
"she didn't invent Sea Punk."
And, you know, while I may not have invented it,
I definitely, like, am kind of the face
of Sea Punk, you know what I mean?
- [Charles] Yeah.
- Fantasea, Azealia Banks, that was a time,
you know what I mean?
Like, I jumped onto all that Tumblr aesthetic,
and was like, I really connected to it,
and it became, like, a part of me.
And I think that there all these kind of like,
like, internet time capsule things
that kind of translate into real life.
Like, now-a-days, they're, like,
doing this Vapor Wave thing, like, pffft.
I sound so old, right?
Don't I sound like such an old bitch?
Like, ugh, Vapor Wave.
But, yeah, now-a-days, the kids are doing,
like, these Vapor Waves things,
and there are all these different kinds of
internet aesthetics, but Sea Punk is special.
I think it's the least pretentious.
I think all these, like, Vapor Wave kids
and, like, Cyber-Wave-whatever dorks, they're just,
like, they're too pretentious.
I think Sea Punk was just like
it is, just free
and, you know, fun.
And it's natural, it's more natural.
- [Charles] Was there anything else
you would like to tell fans about the song,
or about what you have coming next?
- Well yeah, next up, we're going to have
a music video going,
and,
it's going to be really cute.
And yeah, that's it.
I think I'm just gonna do a video and then drop the album.
It's gonna be a repack of the first Fantasea mixtape.
Remastered, some of the songs will be rerecorded,
and then there'll be Fantasea II on there,
so it'll be maybe, like, a total of, like,
40-something tracks.
So it's going to be jam packed.
Double-disc.
Summer.
I think I'll just do Anna
and drop the rest of the project.