The Reason Azealia Banks Hates Beyonce

It might be hard to imagine anyone truly hating Beyoncé. In addition to being one of the most popular musicians and cultural icons of all time, Queen Bey generally seems to go about her business without engaging in petty feuds with anyone else in the music industry. Even when Beyoncé does find herself at the center of a scandal — like the now-infamous elevator incident between her husband and her sister – the uproar has less to do with the actual feud and more to do with the shock that Beyoncé would even be in the proximity of drama.

If there is someone that could find a way to feud with Beyoncé, though, it would be Azealia Banks. The New York rapper has feuded with enough people to fill a Coachella roster, so it's no surprise that she would take issue with someone as famous as Beyoncé. In the wake of Beyoncé's huge, culturally resetting 2016 album Lemonade, Banks was one of the first to take to Twitter and say she wasn't feeling it. However, her criticism of Beyoncé didn't stop there.

Beyoncé caught the fury of Azealia Banks in 2016. While most of the internet was busy praising the newly arrived Lemonade and scouring its lyrics for clues about Beyoncé's personal life, Banks was not having it. She wrote on Twitter that the album wasn't powerful "because its coming from an entertainer." Banks claimed (per Vibe) that Beyoncé was "capitalizing on a national convo, w/o actually having 2 participate in the conversation. she can't be interviewed unless the questions are approved beforehand."

The BeyHive was quick to jump in and defend its queen, but Banks was having none of it. The New York rapper took issue with Beyoncé's decision to get more outwardly political with her work, claiming, "she's purposefully strayed away from political discourse her entire career to make sure she didn't alienate white ppl." Banks then said, "now that black women's suffering is a national conversation, she wants to hop on it and make our suffering 'trendy.'" Banks adding, "she needs to stay under Jay-z's foot where she belongs, and stay out of the creative woman's way." It would seem that Banks had made her point, but she kept going, calling the woman with two dozen Grammy Awards "a poacher," and saying, "i'm not interested in Beyonce's mind because she doesn't have one." 

Beyoncé, of course, stayed true to form and did not acknowledge Banks. Those nasty tweets, by the way, are now long gone.