 In May 2015, Banks announced on Twitter that she had recorded an entire mixtape of Jay Z covers and remixes, titled Slay-Z, and that she was contemplating releasing it. In August 2015, Banks revealed that due to contractual agreements, she was blocked from releasing any new music until her contract had expired, which would be around March 2016. On February 1, 2016, Banks announced that she would be releasing the aforementioned mixtape, and its lead single "The Big Big Beat" would be released on February 7. The announcement of new music came during a flurry of tweets Banks sent in which she endorsed Donald Trump and his campaign for presidency, which some critics saw as a cheap way of gaining publicity, with Spectrum writer Kerry Cardoza calling calling it "purely coincidental" that Banks endorsed Trump on the same days as announcing her new single. On February 8, Banks uploaded the single's artwork to Twitter. The following day, it was reported that the single had been pushed back. Banks uploaded the song to her SoundCloud account on February 19, self-releasing the single. On May 6, it was released on iTunes.
