While it’s getting kind of hard to keep track of just how many music industry figures Azealia Banks has engaged in a feud, one of the Harlem rapper’s most notable spats was with English indie icons The Stone Roses during last year’s Future Music Festival.

Following a performance at FMF 2013 in Sydney, Banks, who was running hot on the momentum of her world-beating single 212, took to Twitter to lambast the Roses, claiming her former tour manager “made a pact with the Stone Roses [to] sabotage my set because I fired him”.

[include_post id=”184780″]

She followed up by wishing “nothing but excrement and death” on the group, calling them “old saggy white niggas”. She then cancelled an Adelaide show planned for the following week, alleging “stupid road hags” were planning to disrupt her performance once again.

For many, the incident was an introduction to Banks’ ever-controversial style, while for many others, it simply resulted in confusion as to why a legendary British rock group would want to sabotage a performance by an up-and-coming Harlem rapper with whom they’d previously had no interaction.

“I was dating this tour manager, and we stopped dating,” Banks, who recently unveiled her long-awaited debut album, Broke With Expensive Taste, now tells The Guardian. “I didn’t want to fire him, but I wanted to bring my new boyfriend on tour.”

“So he did something really stupid where he had dinner with the Stone Roses and he made a pact with them to have one of their roadies come on my stage and soundcheck during my set. Whatever. I broke his heart and it was unfair. I kind of deserved it. But don’t fuck with my stage or I’ll kill you.”

[include_post id=”351834″]

“Anyway, I’d been looking for [the Roses] all day, and this van comes up and Ian Brown gets out the car, and he’s like: ‘Why you talkin’ about me on Twitter?’ And literally I got this close to him.” According to The Guardian, Banks then bent towards the interviewer, “her face millimetres from mine, and roar[ed]”.

So, Australian fans finally have an explanation for Banks’ behaviour during Future 2013. Of course, the lovers’ quarrel doesn’t really explain her “super short” set at Splendour In The Grass 2012, or her 90-second appearance at Listen Out last year.

Get unlimited access to the coverage that shapes our culture.
to Rolling Stone magazine
to Rolling Stone magazine