The music video for Azealia Banks' song "212" closely follows the lyrics of the song. It features Banks rapping and singing throughout. Some lyrics appear on screen as she performs them, allowing the viewer to interpret the words without her presence affecting their understanding. The video relies heavily on close-ups and medium shots of Banks' face and performance, exemplifying the record companies' demand to showcase the main artist. As a performance-based video, it successfully promoted the song which gained over 42 million YouTube views.

1. Azealia Banks – 212
The music video for this song is an amplification at it slightly retains a link with the lyrics. The first,
obvious connection with the song is the fact that we can see Azealia Banks rapping/singing and act
according to the lyrics almost throughout the entire video. Also, some of the lines literally appear in
the music video either while they are sang/rapped or just after and nearly always in between the
shots of Azealia’s lips pronouncing them. This particular kind of shot makes this scene look as those
words were virtually coming out of her mouth, reminds of
dialog clouds in comic books where there is no sound, only the
image so you have to imagine what a specific voice would
sound like. In this music video’s case, displayed lyrics, even for
a few seconds, leave the words more to the viewer’s own
interpretation when they are not affected by Azealia Banks
presence which then might affect his/her comprehension of
them. They are left pure to the viewer so he/she is more likely
to be interested of the song as it reminds that person better of
its own experience with e.g. ‘I guess that c**t getting eaten’.
The record companies usually demand a lot of close-ups of the
main artist. In this music video various types of close-ups and
medium shots is the essence of it. Banks’ face and the way she Top: extreme close up of Azealia Banks lips,
bottom: the text which appears flashing while
is performing are the things that are bringing the audience to
she is pronouncing it in the shot above
this video because that is simply what appears throughout the
vast majority of it and therefore this video is a typical example of exhibitionism. It worked. Azealia
Banks herself was interesting enough in the video for ‘212’ to reach 42,961,344 views on YouTube at
the time I was doing this analysis.
The type of this music video is definitely a
performance, according to Simon Frith’s theory of
music video typologies.
Azealia Banks rapping
Azealia Banks dancing