Posted by Emily Exton on 07/12/2012 at 4:00 PM News

The Popdust Files: azealia banks, Fantasea

The new releases keep coming this week, with even more of them being nautical-themed. If you’ve already listened to channel ORANGE steadily over the last two days, it’s time to add another new batch of free (!) tunes to your summer rotation. After jump-starting the year with “212,” and letting her buzz build through photo shoots with pin-up potential and a series of fame-rejecting tweets, New York’s most famous non-rapper Azealia Banks unveiled her Fantasea mixtape to fans Wednesday night, currently available for free download.

The 19-song release includes previously heard outputs like the Diplo-produced “Fuck Up the Fun” and Popdust favorite “Jumanji,” along with three new songs and a skit. A skit! It’s no “Sex Therapy,” rather more a gracious, let-me-name-the-important-people-who-helped-me-get-a-record-deal outro, but still, she must have read our love letter to the forgotten art form. “Esta Noche” samples Montell Jordan’s “Get it on Tonite” and fellow New Yorker Styles P joins in on “Nathan,” while the titular “Fantasea” is a mishmosh of faint cries and a persistent snare numbed by her sharp-fired rhymes.

A majority of the tape’s tracks might be familiar to those steadily following her rise, but by our count there are well over 10 barbecue and bonfire-ready anthems to lead you deep into summer, before the release of major label debut, Broke With Expensive Taste. Time can pass as slowly as it wants; we’d like to chill with this one for a while.