In the years since “212,” Banks became known as much for her noisy tiffs with other artists as for her consistently inventive music. Lately, though, she says she’s been rethinking things. “You know what?” she says. “When you are a woman, it’s just much easier to attract bees with honey than with fucking vinegar. And I was giving off a lot of vinegar. I created a situation where they didn’t want to listen to me. It was like, ‘This bitch is fucking running her mouth all the time.'”
That said, Banks points out that she did a lot of growing up in the public eye. “There’s a window of youth where those things are allowed, and I was definitely taking advantage of it,” she says. “I was getting my kicks, like, ‘Fuck it – I’m 20, 21. I have 3 million dollars. I got a hit fucking song. I’m getting free vodka in my dressing room. The promoter just bought me some weed. They’re giving me free clothes. Fuck everybody.’ I was having a good time, and I wouldn’t take any of it back.”
You can hear how the industry drama affected Banks in songs like “Ice Princess,” which features some of her hardest rhymes. “I felt like I had been auditioning for two years,” she says. “I was mad for no reason, and everything was pissing me off. Fuck everything, fuck everybody. I’m going to rip all your heads off and put you in the fucking meat locker.”
Last year, she handed a completed album in to Interscope/Polydor. “I thought they were going to like it,” she says. “But when I handed it in, they told me that I didn’t have a hit.” She went back to the studio and recorded “Chasing Time” – one of the most instantly appealing dance-pop anthems on the album – only to be told that the label preferred another song, the twitchy house groove “Soda,” as a single. “I just spent a whole ‘nother fuckin’ four months in the studio trying to come up with some shit, and you want to go with fuckin’ ‘Soda’?” Banks says, still incredulous. “I really just lost it. That was the day you saw me on Twitter, like, ‘The fuck? I’m tired of talking to these white guys about my shit.’ It felt like they were playing some sort of head game. And you know I love conspiracy theories. I was like, ‘They’re trying to brainwash me! Fuck these guys!'”