Azealia Banks' "Soda" Video Gives Me Hope for Her Next Era

It's easy to forget that Azealia Banks is among the most dextrous rappers of her generation. For a number of years, her music has been overshadowed by social media distractions and scandals (some of them self-made, some of them certainly not, but all made worse by the reputation that was quickly pinned on her by the media at large). And all that noise makes her genuinely interesting, innovative output often feel like secondary news.

Following 2012's electric Fantasea mixtape, Azealia released her album Broke with Expensive Taste independently in 2014, after breaking out of her deal with Universal. That album features "Soda," a track where fizzing, effervescent production belies the melancholy of lyrics about forcing a smile while on the brink of a breakdown. Years since fans first enjoyed "Soda," she's now released its music video. As someone who appreciates her flow, I'm not mad. The song's re-emergence is a great, timely reminder of her skills, and the low-key video – shot with her band in the desert – let's the deceptively sunny-sounding track take centre stage.

So far, 2018 has been a good year for Azealia. While she has, of course, made mistakes in the past, she has also paid for them publicly in a far more severe manner than male and/or white celebrities have tended to for similar misdemeanours. The tides of online opinion have, of late, tended to turn in her favour – particularly since it was revealed late in 2017 that Russell Crowe and RZA had, as she said, lied about an altercation with Banks in 2016. Last month, she shared news of an alleged new deal with Entertainment One on Instagram (though that post has since been deleted), and since then, she revealed the tracklist for her upcoming project Fantasea II, which is scheduled for an early summer release. Now, there's "Soda." All of the that added together gives me hope for the future of her career – and if the court of internet gossip blogging could lay off creating a fuss over every Instagram comment she ever posts, it could mean a prosperous new era.

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