Member Since: 12/2/2011
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How Iggy mastered her "blaccent"
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SURELY, the strangest turn on the music scene in recent years was a white Australian’s ascent to the pinnacle of American hip-hop. For a strange spell, Iggy Azalea was the Donald Trump of the rap game: racially divisive, prone to ugly rants — and confoundingly popular.
With her debut single “Fancy,” she became only the fourth solo female rapper to ever top the Billboard Hot 100. In 2014, the four-time Grammy nominee held both the first and second spots on the Billboard chart, a feat not even Beyoncé can claim.
The most remarkable thing about Azalea was the audiovisual gimmick: a towering blonde spitting in unmistakably black tones. Hip-hop, of course, has long transcended the African American community, and there is a path for white rappers to channel the music without drawing too many complaints of appropriation. But dialect, the shapes of one’s vowels and the rhythms of one’s speech, is a far more intimate marker of identity.
Many critics found it offensive that Azalea would appropriate an accent so clearly not hers. “It sounds like a big bite to me — the tone of voice,” R&B singer Jill Scott said on “Sway In The Morning.”
“The question is why? Why is her mimicry of sonic Blackness okay?” Brittney Cooper, a culture critic and assistant professor at Rutgers, said in an essay.
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