Azealia Banks review – thundering bare bones set almost brings down the building

The balcony at Brixton Academy is shaking with the volume of 5,000 people screaming “IMMA RUIN YOU CUNT” at the tops of their lungs. It’s the second date of Azealia Banks’s first UK tour in more than five years, and the Harlem rapper has the crowd eating out of the palm of her hand like she’s working a basement club.

With a career spanning 16 years and just one official album to her name, Azealia Banks usually makes more headlines for her controversies and commentary than her music. This has undoubtedly held her back career-wise, at least by traditional metrics, but even posting Instagram stories from a Trump rally in Florida hasn’t managed to override her reputation as one of the most talented performers of her generation.

Tonight, she struts on stage in a Union Jack corset, knee high black boots and a royal robe – which she shucks off to a crowd response so thundering it makes you worry for the structural integrity of the building. The set is eclectic, racing through a slew of fan favourites from Galcher Lustwerk collaboration Fuck Him All Night to house bop Anna Wintour to the thumping fashion anthem New Bottega. She closes with her bratty breakout single 212 and the whole venue is bouncing, fingers jabbing the air and t-shirts swinging above heads.

Flanked by a DJ and a small screen brandishing the words AZEALIA BANKS in crude graphics, the performance is stripped to its bare bones. No live musicians, no dancers, no stage design, two helpful employees stood in front of a bare wall in the lobby where the merch should be. The only time Banks addressed the audience was during a brief lull in the set, when she cut “Pyrex Princess” short to ask, “what do you guys wanna hear?” Between each track she totters over to the DJ booth and belts out an a capella in a big, soulful voice that’s right up there with Whitney and Mariah.

The show probably could have benefitted from a little dressing, but it’s a credit to Banks’s talent that she can carry the atmosphere of an academy on her tiny shoulders. In an era of elaborate multimillion dollar pop tours, Banks takes music back to its raw elements. All she needs is a mic and a stage.