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The Cultural CRIMES of Iggy Azalea
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Iggy Azalea doesn’t wear blackface, but that doesn’t mean her drag performance doesn’t share some essential genetic code with the old-school American minstrel show.
Iggy Azalea was born Amethyst Amelia Kelly in New South Wales. A white, Australian, female recording artist and model
But if you turn on the radio (or if you’re under the age of forty and listen to music on Spotify) looking for Iggy’s hot new flow, be forewarned: the 24-year-old Aussie doesn’t do much more than mimic the identifiably black spitting style of the American South.
What Azalea does best is mimicry. She might have adopted mentor T.I.’s sound, but she, unlike him, can’t trace her flow to the place she grew up or the specific culture she grew up within. Azalea’s performance is quite an achievement; after all, good drag is hard work, pretending takes a lot of practice, and the quest for “realness” is a lifelong journey. Whether or not you think that Azalea is a good rapper, you have to admit that she’s among the best at what she does; Brittney Cooper writes, “This Australian born-and-raised white girl almost convincingly mimics the sonic register of a downhome Atlanta girl.”
But Iggy Azalea is a special case: her story falls at the intersection of race, gender, commodification and co-option, and speaks to a history of black erasure that many artists feel they can no longer afford to ignore.
When Azealia Banks went on Hot 97 and complained “that Iggy Azalea **** isn’t better than any ****ing black girl that’s rapping today,” she wasn’t just talking about Iggy Azalea and her Grammy nominations. The process of co-opting black music and selling it back to the adoring public in whiteface is as American as apple pie. Ragtime, blues, country, jazz, soul, and rock and roll were all pioneered or inspired by black artists. The twang we hear as emblematic of white country music is actually the direct descendant of black folk music banjo.
White musicians are rewarded for their ability to imitate their black counterparts, and decades of black achievement and musical genius are swept under the rug, forgotten and ignored.
Iggy Azalea is not a mastermind of this specific system of racial inequality, but that doesn’t negate the toxicity of her role. Conversely, Iggy’s alleged crime is twofold: she gets to profit off of her white appeal while simultaneously selling a black sound. She is making a huge career for herself by mimicking the vocal patterns and phrases of a Southern black girl—in effect, as Banks is arguing, stealing that nameless black girl’s own success in the process.
As Azealia Banks was so quick to point out, Iggy Azalea has the luxury of appropriating blackness when she feels like it, and disengaging when she doesn’t. Banks tweeted in the wake of Mike Brown’s murder, “Black culture is cool, but black issues sure aren’t huh?” Iggy Azalea did not speak out about Ferguson, and hasn’t made any specific statements about race relations; instead, she responded “World issues shouldn’t be used as a poor excuse to promote fan battles.”
As long as being black in America is seen and experienced as a problem, white rappers reaping the rewards of African-American appropriation will always be problematic.
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A very interesting read. 
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