Azealia Banks Homophobia: Does New York Rapper Have A Gay Problem?

New York City rapper Azealia Banks hurled a homophobic slur at a flight attendant early Tuesday in an outburst videotaped by a passenger in Los Angeles. The entertainment news outlet TMZ obtained the clip that shows Banks, 24, calling the flight attendant a “f*****g f****t,” after airline personnel intervened in an altercation between the Harlem rapper and a French couple disembarking at Los Angeles International Airport.

Banks, who claims the French man struck her in the face as she squeezed past him for the exit, reportedly spat, clawed and swung at the man before flight attendants got involved. The Billboard Award-winning artist then allegedly engaged in a tug of war over her bag with the flight attendant who asked Banks to calm down before the slur was hurled.

Banks, whose Twitter account is set to private, tweeted about the incident Tuesday: "I don't care. I've said it before and I'll say it again. I don't tolerate bitcha**ness and I don't tolerate men putting their hands on me."

She tweeted earlier: "Ok so I get hit in the face by a man and no one cares. The only [thing I] hear [is] what I called the man who was blocking my exit."

Although police were called, the French couple declined to press charges against Banks, TMZ reported. However, the incident was the latest of a series skirmishes between Banks and openly gay individuals in which she resorts to using anti-gay epithets.

Vice columnist Mitch Sutherland took Banks to task earlier this year, after the rapper asserted that white gay men are unfairly allowed to call women female dogs without fear of public backlash. “Even if i am a homophobe …so wat? [sic] ” Banks reportedly tweeted in February to Sutherland, before resorting a string of vulgar insults against the writer. Days earlier, Banks called the openly gay entertainment news personality Perez Hilton a “f****t” on Twitter, according to the LGBT news outlet After Ellen.

Banks, who was raised in the historic Harlem neighborhood of Manhattan, is openly bisexual and has claimed that gives her license to use the “f-word” against gay men. That claim has angered some lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender activists who responded that no one should have license to verbally assault minorities.

“These words are slurs, whoever says them,” a representative of Stonewall, the historic New York City inn that birthed the gay rights movement in the late 1960s, said earlier this year.