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Iggy Azalea: Why the Hip Hop World Hates the Aussie Rapper

Iggy Azalea

Nicki Minaj seemed to suggest in her acceptance speech at the BET (Black Entertainment Television) Awards that the ceremony should only honor rappers who write their own lyrics. This was widely taken as a stab at Iggy Azalea who many speculate doesn’t write her own rhymes, an unforgivable sin in Hip Hop. Minaj later clarified her stance on Twitter and seemed to reject the beef with Iggy. Saying instead that she believe in all women. But the widespread assumption that she was taking a dig at the Aussie rapper of “Fancy” fame is pretty understandable given the context

It was a whole two years ago when someone on my Facebook feed first introduced me to Iggy Azalea. I’d never used Facebook to find new music before, but this early 20-something hip hop gal whose image and rhymes seemed freshly bubbled from the Southern US Hip Hop scene seemed like a welcome addition to my feed.

It wasn’t until I’d seen her on Never Mind The Buzzcocks, a UK music-themed comedy panel show, that I realized this feisty blonde bitch rapper wasn’t southern – or American – at all. Her charming drawl was of Australian origin, specifically of a rural New South Wales variety. For a moment her mouth and what was coming out of it seemed like some strange  idea of a joke. A well timed Aussie accent perfectly synced to the mouth movements of this badass American beauty. Eventually, I relinquished to reality. I’d been hoodwinked into thinking she was another native US wordsmith who would add her name to the (small) list of commercially successful female rappers.

Like many others I thought that because she spat her rhymes in a marked Deep South ring,  she was a product of the land of fried chicken and national anthems that sound like pop songs. Her accent was largely indistinguishable from most mainstream Hip Hop artists, despite being as Aussie as beach surfing and barbecues.

This might’ve been an uncontroversial topic of conversation if she were a singer. For there are many non-American recording artists who find it preferable, for whatever reason, to ply their works in an American accent. Iggy Azalea is similar in the way that she too prefers to spit her bars in a twang whose origins comes from thousands of miles away. Rap and Hip Hop are unlike most music genres however. Their priorities differ from someone spending their studio time recording old school Soul or Jazz for example. To the Hip Hop brethren “realness” is a sacred slice of their craft. It’s this concept of ‘realness’ that has seen Iggy come under fierce criticism from the genre’s geeks and enthusiasts.

In recent decades Australia (like the UK, Canada and New Zealand) has had to come to terms with the fact that American sounds and trends are the dominant frequency picked up by the Koala bear continent. The Oz city of Melbourne has become particularly renowned for its displays of graffiti and a unique mix of European arty-ness and US inspired street culture. More than most cities in Europe and North America, the city seems to combine it’s own interpretation of US pop culture with it’s already distinct way of doing things.

The invasion of Americanized pop culture hasn’t diluted the country’s sense of self however. Perhaps more than any other English speaking country, the land of Kangaroos is especially proud of it’s unique vernacular and quirky way of speech. For all of it’s modern history, the sub-continent nation has prided itself on retaining it’s own charming take on communication, whether it’s the clichéd quip offering to put a “shrimp on the barbie” or their distinct way of describing ladies as “shelias”, Aussies consider their dialect an integral part of belonging to the land down under.

But at the tender age of 16, a young Iggy Azalea left her homeland and it’s endearing way of speech behind. Driven by her obsession, the gravitational pull of the American planet proved too irresistible to a girl who’d been enthralled by the country’s culture and sound from an early age. “I was drawn to America because I felt like an outsider in my own country, I was in love with hip-hop, and America is the birthplace of that, so I figured the closer I was to the music, the happier I’d be. I was right.”.

She sought solace in putting every inch of herself in breaking the American market with her own verses. Moving from her home of Oz to Florida, Texas and then Georgia in the space of only a few years. Expending all of her efforts on raising her profile, she eventually attracted the attention of tastemakers who convinced her that a move to Los Angeles would be a career move worth making. A professional relationship with Interscope Records soon followed. But like other female rappers of her generation (Azealia Banks and Angel Haze to name two) Iggs soon ran into drama with her record label. She cut ties with them last year and signed (in the US) to Island Def Jam in quick succession. Proving her status as a powerful commercial entity that can command fat-cat attention despite being one of music’s newcomers.

Her success has provoked some raised eyebrows and nasty looks. The fact that she’s a) white and not American and b) far too willing to amalgamate herself with pop stuff, has meant she’s come under heavy barrages of criticism, more than most artists who have done similar things. Her track with Ariana Grande, a Disney-style young actress mentored by Bieber’s manager Scooter Braun, is considered by some a sacrificial slaughter of Hip Hop’s core essence. After all, an artist like Ariana is far more at home on the cover of pre-teen magazines than on the front of The Source, SPIN or any other post-pubic hair publication. If she had committed only one of these crimes it would’ve been forgiven, even overlooked, but not two. Two is too many.

Iggy’s “realness” credentials that we talked about earlier, are also pretty thin on the ground within the Hip Hop community. Regardless of the fact that she has followed almost every word of the genre’s formula for chart success, in much the same way that her recent critic Nicki Minaj has. Being a non-American that has stormed the charts in the way she has has qualified her for extra-special condemnation. For many stalwarts of the genre she’s merely a white, Aussie fangirl who has copied a style that millions of African Americans consider their own.

Dropping her Australian accent to don an American twang has meant she’s not everybody’s favourite artist at home either. She might be an impassioned follower of the Hip Hop sound, but the speculation over whether or not she writes her own material – on top of her previously mentioned outsider status – is enough to resign her to a permanently low place among the  fandom, and as such keep her almost solely as a “rapper for non-Hip Hop fans”. Something that her supposed critic, Nicki Minaj, despite her pop-inflected rap will probably never have.

 

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