10 Things You Didn’t Know About Azealia Banks

She is the founder of her own record label, Azealia Banks Records and known for publicly speaking out on African American civil rights issues, Azealia Banks was born Azealia Amanda Banks on 31 May 1991 in Manhattan, New York. At the age of 10, she began performing in off-Broadway musicals with the Youth Theatre in Lower Manhattan. She began releasing music through MySpace in 2008; eventually being signed to XL Recordings at age 17. There is no doubt that the 25-years-old songwriter, singer and rapper has definitely paved a successful career for herself in the music industry.

Here are 10 things you probably didn’t know about the American singer and rapper, Azealia Banks:

1. Azealia Banks was born Azealia Amanda Banks on 31 May 1991 in Manhattan, New York City.

2. Her mother raised her and two older sisters in Harlem, after their father died of pancreatic cancer when she was two years old.

3. At the age of 10, she began performing in off-Broadway musicals with the Youth Theatre in Lower Manhattan.

4. She attended Catholic school in Harlem in her childhood, and danced with the National Dance Institute.

5. At the age of sixteen, she starred in a production of the comedy-noir musical City of Angels, where she was found by an agent and sent on auditions for TBS, Nickelodeon and Law & Order.

6. She began releasing music through MySpace in 2008, eventually being signed to XL Recordings at age 17.

7. After her Canadian visa expired, she returned to New York, where she sold key chains at a Manhattan jazz club and danced at a Queens Strip Club to make ends meet.

8. In September 2011, she released her debut single “212” which attained moderate chart success, peaking at number 12 in the United Kingdom and at number 11 in Ireland.

9. She won the Best Single category for her work on her debut single “212” at the 2012 Urban Music Awards.

10. In December 2014 she called for over $100 trillion to be paid to African Americans as financial reparations for the enslavement of their ancestors, citing U.S. reparations to Native American communities and the German reparations to Jewish survivors of the Holocaust as a precedent.