Azealia Banks Accuses M.I.A of Being ‘Anti-Black:’ ‘She Stay Trying to Compare Struggles’

Azealia Banks (YouTube)

Azealia Banks just called out rapper M.I.A. and accused her of taking shots at Black people. This comes after the U.K.-born artist, who’s family moved to Sri Lanka, said something about the Black Lives Matter movement last year.

“Mia be low-key trying to take credit for Black culture and the sh– is annoying,” Banks tweeted, according to XXL. “She’s like clearly quite anti-Black. I don’t get her points a lot of the time. It’s like she came up in hip-hop, then wants to be like what about my people, but tries to discredit. It always like why do you care about Blacks and not Indians when Blacks took this from culture? She stay trying to compare struggles, when it’s like honey, just spit your rhyme.”

Some may find it ironic that the Harlem rapper criticized M.I.A, considering she defended her after the “Paper Planes” singer dropped out of London’s Afropunk Festival amid backlash for her Black Lives Matter comments.

“It’s not a new thing to me,” said M.I.A. in 2016. “It’s what Lauryn Hill was saying in the the 1990s or Public Enemy in the 1980s. Is Beyoncé or Kendrick Lamar going to say ‘Muslim lives matter’ or ‘Syrian lives matter?’ Or ‘This kid in Pakistan matters?’ That’s a more interesting question.”

From the way it looks, Banks’ shot at the “AIM” rhymer had to do with a message she wrote about Diplo. In a lengthy Instagram post, M.I.A expressed frustration that some believe the A-list producer discovered her.

“It’s important you don’t see me as a lil’ thing Diplo discovered, because I’m a brown woman,” she wrote.

I just want to clear this up Here’s a lil story of how this happened. I discovered diplo because Steve Mackey played me a song by him released on big dada! I found out on a “flyer” he was djing and spent 16 pounds and bought my own way into fabric club in London . No one put me on the list! Nobody paid for it! I approached him and gave him my record! There was no label no A N R no channels. a handful of people believed in me , then when I got a deal , they turned on me. This was why i forged my own path and style and genre. I didn’t want anyone to say they made me! To this day so many people have made careers off me and the same people distort history destroy the story because of my politics , which he played a part in cementing. He said “politics is a terrible thing for music”in 2010 in the NYT article . During this time when 400 000 Tamil were getting bombed to death , he used to have a dart board of my face on his rider . Jus sayin . “He text me “you’re walking backwards into a brick wall” when the NYT article came out. While I was defending privacy laws with a newborn baby like it’s me against the world. No one came to my shows during this time because of that article and racist memes mad decent were spreading through hipsters. I let him cash in on the sound because I had no choice. I felt it was important to defend freedom of speech, even for American people and couldn’t play the game. Everyone involved in major lazer now came together through me. I made boyz in Jamaica and Trinidad. I took switch there carried beers up the mountain everyday . Wes wasn’t there because he was cheating on me in Brazil at the time. he turned up a year later and networked in JA saying he produced BOYZ coz the song blew in Jamaica. Walshy was the directors roommate and Chris was my day to day in Trinidad. it’s important you don’t see me as a Iil thing diplo discovered because I’m a brown woman , and this is the first story of a brown female musician who smashed it for the first time . That didn’t happen because I accidentally walked passed diplo. Ta! This is literally 1% of the story!

A post shared by MIA (@miamatangi) on Aug 26, 2017 at 10:48am PDT

As far as Banks, she’s transitioning from warring with people like Iggy Azealia and Russell Crowe to making music again. Just a couple of months ago, she released the lyrically driven song “Chi Chi” and then two versions of the cut “Escapades.”

Banks also announced a month long-North American tour, which starts on Oct. 3 in Grands Rapid, Mich., and closes out on Oct. 28 in San Francisco, Calif.

The New York native recently squashed her beef with Azalea after their longtime feud, and the two were supposed to work on a song together. However, that failed once Iggy’s record label Def Jam halted her new album “Digital Distortion” and said they wouldn’t be releasing any more singles.

M.I.A. hasn’t responded to Banks’ tweets yet but if she does, we could see a full-on social media war between the two. We’ll have to see.