There were subsequent rows with Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Erykah Badu \u2013 deep breath \u2013 Lana Del Rey, One Directioner Zayn Malik, Rita Ora and Beyonc\u00e9. In 2016, Banks accused Gladiator actor Russell Crowe of choking and racially abusing her at a party; prosecutors in Los Angeles declined to press charges against Crowe.<\/p>\n
Three years later, she caused a diplomatic crisis when she called all Irish women ugly. And in 2024, just as the internet was starting to forget about Banks, an online tussle with the 1975 frontman Matty Healy<\/a> \u2013 which ended with Banks comparing the Manchester singer\u2019s teeth to \u201cwhite castle burger onions\u201d \u2013 made her go viral all over again.<\/p>\n But it was her beef with the world\u2019s richest man that threatened to derail her career. In 2018, before Elon Musk even became that divisive \u2013 when he was still focusing on Tesla\u2019s electric cars and before we knew a whole lot about his obsession with test tube babies \u2013 Banks decided to go to war.<\/p>\n Having met Musk while recording music with his then-partner Grimes, Banks described the experience as \u201clike a real life episode of Get Out\u201d (referring to Jordan Peele\u2019s 2017 horror film) and called him a \u201ctrash ass beta male pig\u201d obsessed with posting on social media while high on acid. After some back and forth, in which Musk denied and then admitted to meeting Banks, she accused the businessman of tapping her phone and blackmailing her. Grimes, meanwhile, the singer with whom Musk shares three children, was described by Banks as smelling \u201clike a roll of nickels\u201d.<\/p>\n Though it is clear that Banks is capable of musical greatness \u2013 she was working at a strip club when she wrote 212 (later named by Rolling Stone magazine as one of the 500 Greatest Songs of All Time) in order to make ends meet \u2013 her insane rants online that often wander into racist and homophobic insults are becoming harder to ignore. In the words of Lana Del Rey<\/a>, who famously fought with Banks in 2018, \u201cYou could have been the greatest female rapper alive but u blew it.\u201d<\/p>\n While I strongly believe we should separate the art from the artist, and more generally that we don\u2019t all have to share the same beliefs, it\u2019s becoming harder to justify treating Banks as an artist and not just another crackpot on the internet. Banks has had one hit \u2013 two at a push \u2013 yet has somehow dominated the cultural conversation for nearly two decades, mostly because it\u2019s hard to ignore someone acting crazy.<\/p>\n It could be time to let Banks, who wasted her shot at being the greatest female rapper alive, fade into oblivion. Or, if Starmer does wind up being booted out of office, perhaps she could find her true calling in Westminster.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"There were subsequent rows with Eminem, Kendrick Lamar, Erykah Badu \u2013 deep breath \u2013 Lana Del Rey, One…\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":550192,"comment_status":"","ping_status":"","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[28],"tags":[5343,96,1716,12174,128,2820,5438,56,54,55,157732],"class_list":["post-550191","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","has-post-thumbnail","category-music","tag-culture","tag-entertainment","tag-kanye-west","tag-kemi-badenoch","tag-music","tag-pop-music","tag-standard","tag-uk","tag-united-kingdom","tag-unitedkingdom","tag-us-content"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550191","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=550191"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/550191\/revisions"}],"wp:featuredmedia":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media\/550192"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=550191"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=550191"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.newsbeep.com\/uk\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=550191"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}