Watch the throne…
[Video][Website]
[7.38]
Will Adams: Welcome back, Azealia. After a turbulent two years of sporadic single releases — some great and terrifying, some embarrassing and downright atrocious — you’ve come back with a kick-ass album and a fine lead single. You’ve stuck to your guns and continue to be a few steps ahead of your listener, who can never quite know what you or your song are about to do next. Even better, you’ve done it while finally presenting a song that has a clear pop structure, verse-chorus and all. I applaud you. You have arrived.
[8]
Rebecca A. Gowns: Talk about a comeback! Great beat, great lyrics — with the perfect analogy for a comeback single — and plenty of energy to spare. I’ve been reading her interviews and it seems like she’s really matured and become more focused in these past few years. Perhaps the sabbatical was necessary in the grander scheme of things.
[9]
Danilo Bortoli: Azealia Banks has got to be the first rapper in recent memory to have a Greatest Hits compilation released before a proper debut. (Let’s not fool ourselves, Broke With Expensive Taste does not feature that much new, quality material to justify its existence.) “Chasing Time” is, by comparison, her “Celebration”, the kind of filler most artists release just to make these album releases more bearable. On top of that, Banks has admitted “Chasing Time” is a result of the strange, complicated relationship she had with her old label while searching of a hit, which is the worst environment someone’s pop sensibilities should be obligated to develop into a track that could be played in the radio — something Azealia used to manage to do easily (once). And maybe this crazy, unfortunate pressure might explain why “Chasing Time” sounds so forced and generic, a rushed attempt at commercial house. If only she could stick to Lone forever.
[4]
Katherine St Asaph: Azealia Banks’s music was never bad. She phoned it in, she half-baked MusiContent for the mouths that demand it faster and mushier, but even when she phoned it in, she was never bad. Go back and listen. The narrative foisted on Banks, the telephone-game thinkpiecing of received wisdom, has served her poorly: each song post ending in “album please?” becoming each feud post ending in “lol, album, please” and critics in turn becoming a thousand little repeaters of whatever politics, or racial politics, guttered from the maws of music execs who wouldn’t market Broke With Expensive Taste. The point of marketing is that nothing is unmarketable, anyway, much less house revival in 2014 — like, is anyone thinking critically here at all? Think of other possible narratives: label prisoner, music-release innovator. Think about the music: “Chasing Time” sparkles, its house flourishes more inventive than the Sigma/Gorgon City/Duke Dumont xeroxing papering the charts overdull. Banks turns in a tour de force vocal: lost time, anxiety, identity crises, solo dancing, all delivered via tense percussion and sunsick hooks. It’s as good as she’s always been, because she’s always been good. Maybe now people can, y’know, remember?
[9]
Patrick St. Michel: Listening to “Chasing Time,” it’s really tough trying to put oneself in the shoes of an Interscope executive and see why they had such an issue with Azealia Banks. Internet beefs aside, “Chasing Time” highlights the best about an artist who seems ready for right now. Here’s throwback ’90s production concealing contemporary blurbles, and all given life by an artist who can deliver satisfying singing before zipping into a solid stretch of rap. And it all fits together just right, nothing sticking out badly.
[8]
Alfred Soto: Not as epochal as “212” — how can it be — but she sings OK and raps even better. The tension helps: the track wants to be a ’90s house track with a rap on it without dredging memories of Freedom Williams.
[7]
Micha Cavaseno: Decent house song but the pairing of this decent singer with that terrible Lil’ Kim impersonator’s raps… Wait, they’re the same person? Ooof.
[5]
Brad Shoup: If I tilt my head, it’s a great grime tune that lost the plot. She’s rapping in second gear, but the timbre is exquisite and those hiccups in the first verse are a good tactic. She’s her own feature, with house vocals serving as the main event. Stack Banks’s singing voices and you’ve got something impressive; the track pulses and pops under six inches of water but the sea’s her thing, right?
[8]
Jonathan Bradley: Banks is an elastic rapper, but one rather bereft of personality, which is why I enjoy her push into nightclub territory. “Chasing Time” is like going out on garage night: you’re feeling good, you dance a bit, and every now and then there’s some rapping you don’t have to pay attention to. No bottle service though; this isn’t “1991.”
[6]
Abby Waysdorf: You hear “212” pretty regularly at clubs here — maybe every second or third time I go out, I hear it. It’s weird to think of how old it is, since it never really left my environment. “Chasing Time” sounds like it’ll be even more popular. On the first listen I could smell the mix of generated fog and alcohol that signals “nightclub” to my brain. It’s polished and chart-ready, borrowing from ’80s/’90s house (and the contemporary revival of it) and 2014 chart pop&B. When that kind of stuff is done well, combined with the right kind of flair and songcraft, it’s irresistible, and it certainly is here. “Chasing Time” isn’t as explosive or singular as “212,” but it’s still damn impressive.
[9]
David Sheffieck: Banks is doing good work showing her range — it’d be hard to find anyone credibly arguing she’s a one-hit wonder anymore — but it’s hard to fully appreciate what she’s got when the beat here is begging so hard for a remix. The stems are fine enough if taken separately, but they’re packed together with a frenetic energy that clashes with Banks’s own rather than complimenting it. Banks is enough to carry this most of the way, but if it gave her some space it’d really pop.
[6]
Thomas Inskeep: It’s a shame that her collab with Disclosure didn’t come to fruition, because this makes it sound like it would’ve worked a charm. I’m surprised by how much of Broke with Expensive Taste is ’90s-house, but more surprised by how un-retrograde it sounds. This is, in fact, fresh. Also, I prefer the more-singing less-rapping Azealia, because as good a rapper as she is, she’s an even more interesting singer. And because she’s a rapper she understands how to make the beats work in deference to her, and not the other way around. In the back half of Taste this runs the risk of getting a little lost, but plucked out as a single it really shines.
[8]
Crystal Leww: Azealia Banks is pushing the boundaries of genre, evident by imagining all the places that I feel like I could hear this being played. “Chasing Time” could be banging through my car speakers as I cruise down Lake Shore Drive or pulsing through the sound system in the dark underground space of Smart Bar or blaring across a massive field in a mix by some pop house DJ sandwiched between “Overdrive” and “I Wanna Feel” or barely there in the background as I browse some chic art gallery opening that I don’t belong at. And that’s really the best thing about Azealia Banks: so often music is played in chic, hip spaces where black women are core to the creation, but so often black women are shunted aside to either featuring credits or not there at all. Here, Azealia Banks is at the topline of credits. She deserves it; “Chasing Time” is covered in Azealia’s fingerprints, a world that she’s created from house beats and her brilliant play on vowel sounds (there may be no one better right now). And she manages to honor the artistic work of black women before her, too, letting the video pay homage to the visual work of these ladies before her.
[9]