Azealia Banks has finally offered an apology following her racist comments about former One Direction member Zayn Malik.
Earlier in the week, Banks called Malik a “hairy curry scented bitch,” after she spotted similarities between his video for Like I Would and her own for Chasing Shadows. The rapper also thought Malik was throwing shade at her on his Twitter, prompting her to embark on a Twitter tirade, perhaps her most venomous yet.
Her Twitter account was suspended following the comments, but she’s used her Instagram as a way of addressing the controversy. She’s spent the week defending herself but it seems now she’s backed down, offering a formal apology.
“Now that the immediacy of the infamous incident has worn off, I’ve had some time to decompress & take a more rational assessment of things,” she wrote.
“I want to extend my sincerest apologies to the world. Employing racial/sexual slurs/stereotypes in attempts to make fun of or degrade another person or group is absolutely unacceptable and is not fair or fun for anyone.”
She further said that she allowed her “anger to get the best of me,” and offered her “deepest apologies”.
It’s a pretty large backflip on her earlier defences in which she stated she made the comments to, “remind [Malik] that he is in fact not one of them…The white privileges he’s so eager to take part in do not apply to him. He’s colored, like me.”
Prior to this apology she had said she was not sorry she said it but, “sorry for the way I made people feel.”
It has not been Banks’ best week. She was dropped from a festival in the UK and also managed to enrage UK grime fans after she said, “UK rap is just a disgrace to rap culture in general.”
