Rapper Azealia Banks has responded to an allegation that she threatened guests at a party thrown by Russell Crowe at his Beverly Hills hotel room on Saturday.
Banks attended the intimate bash as the guest of fellow rapper RZA, TMZ reports. RZA has signed her to his label, while Crowe starred with the Wu-Tang Clan rapper in American Gangster.
However, the evening rapidly went sour. According to “eyewitness accounts”, Banks scoffed at Crowe’s music selection, calling him and another attendee “boring white men”. A female guest reportedly criticized her behavior, causing Banks to go on a tirade, telling Crowe and the woman: “You would love it if I broke my glass, stabbed you guys in the throat, and blood would squirt everywhere like some real Tarantino shit.”
Banks is said to have then raised a glass, threatening to throw it, leading Crowe to grab her in a “bear hug” and remove her from the suite. Security guards then allegedly came to remove her from the hotel grounds.
While Crowe has yet to issue a statement on the supposed incident, he did retweet TMZ’s story.
Banks, who has been suspended from Twitter following a series of racially abusive tweets attacking singer and former One Direction star Zayn Malik in May, used Facebook to share a screenshot of a statement issued on Twitter by her representative Raýmani International:
The 212 rapper apparently detailed the experience in a Facebook post that since been deleted. A screenshot shows that Banks claims Crowe called her the N-word, choked her, and spat at her. However, others at the party claim that the N-word was uttered by her.
This is far from the first time Banks has been embroiled in controversy. In the summer, she described British rap as “a disgrace to rap culture”, prompting her removal from the headline slot at London’s Rinse festival.
In September 2015, she reportedly attacked a man who blocked her path when she was trying to disembark a flight in Los Angeles, and used a homophobic slur against a flight attendant who tried to step in – an incident which was captured on camera. Banks responded that she did not “tolerate bitchassness” and “men putting their hands on me”.
Banks claimed she was voting for Donald Trump, but told the London Evening Standard on Monday that she had revoked her endorsement and that she will vote for Jill Stein.
Banks said: ““Everything [Trump] says out loud is all the things she says behind her back. You don’t think Hillary Clinton is racist? She just wants to be in that white feminist book with Eleanor Roosevelt and, like … Sylvia Plath. That’s what corporate white feminism does.”