Iggy Azalea: A Blooming Hip Hop Flower to Look Out For

Iggy Azalea: A Blooming Hip Hop Flower to Look Out For

    Early Years

        Iggy Azalea (Amethyst Amelia Kelly) started rapping at age fourteen, when she and her neighbors started a group together. From the get go, Iggy Azalea was a determined female, embracing the competitive nature of the hip hop world. In fact, she left the rap group with her friends because she felt the others did not take the project as seriously. At age fifteen, Iggy Azalea took her aspiring dream to be a rapper into her own hands. The artist dropped out of high school to clean houses with her mother in order to save and earn money to move to the United States and pursue her rap career.  Once she procured enough money to travel to the U.S. ,  she lied to her parents, telling them that she was going on a vacation with her friend. Upon arrival, she phoned her parents, informing them that she intended to stay permanently. Her intention to come out on top in the hip hop industry never wavered, and she revolves her life around this dream. Looking back on her decision to move to America, she recalls:

"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." -Iggy Azalea (Wow Magazine)

 Since she moved to Miami six years ago, Iggy now resides in Los Angeles, California. To her credit, the rapper's mad skills have paid off and have lead her to a variety of opportunities, including the title of the first female foreign rapper on XXL Magazine's Top 10 Freshman cover issue. 

      Her first mix tape, "Ignorant Art," which dropped in 2011, challenges the status quo regarding female promiscuity. The brazen subject matter of such controversial songs, such as "Pu$$y" and "Two Times" demonstrate that Iggy is comfortable with her body and her sexuality, emphasizing a sense of gender equality. Many male RNB artists and rappers freely flow vulgarly about women and sexual encounters, with minimal judgment from audiences. Yet female artists with a similar approach are often ridiculed. Iggy Azalea's art encourages her audience to listen to hip hop with an open ear; she breeds a smart group of listeners. She's fly, she knows it, and she's tactful too. Last year, for instance, she dropped a cover of Chris Brown's "Look At Me Now," mixin' her flare to it; she made a loud statement to Brown that he ain't all that dope, especially considering his violent outbreaks towards girlfriend, Rihanna.     

     
       The manner in which she approaches her music videos is also particularly sharp. Through her visual art, she encompasses the concept that it's not the material or language you present that counts: it's the manner in which you present the material. Consider the notorious vixen role that comes to mind when thinking about male rappers. There's a bunch of attractive and promiscuously dressed ladies that shake their junk and fawn over the rapper, accentuating his ever-exuding masculinity. Sure, Iggy has sexy ladies in her vids too, no denying that. Yet,  Iggy Azalea forces viewers to redefine the significance of the vixen role in that the women flaunt their sex appeal to no one but themselves; they're hot to be hot. Watching the "My World" vid, viewers can observe that yes, there are men in the shots, but they serve to promote Iggy's icon status, with shirts that have some of the mixtape's song titles on them. The male actors do not grind with Iggy Azalea, nor her back up dancers, the males are not even in many of the same shots as Iggy and her female crew.  Thus, instead of the females' promiscuity connoting degradation, it signifies these women's confidence to live in full control, relating not only to intimate relations, but their life.  In each video, these women strut their stuff behind Iggy supporting the message that flashes across the screen at the conclusion of the "My World" video: "The world is yours." From the looks of the music video, these ladies seem to be taking control of their surroundings and the people around them. Furthermore, Iggy Azalea is taking the rap industry by storm, just take a look at the six year old in the "Pu$$y" video. Her vibes are so magnetic that little kids, who don't understand the significance of her words, are literally hanging around her neck. 

The Struggle

Warning: Contains some illicit material

        If life is a stage, Iggy Azalea meets the blinding lights "with an intent to make people question and redefine old ideals."  In a field predominately dominated by black males, what's a blonde female Australian to do? With no way to relate to the true experience of black masculinity or  black femininity of American rappers, Iggy navigates through this struggle of finding her place in the hip hop world.  Initially planning to be signed and managed by Interscope Records, the female rapper felt as if she was not a priority and that there was significant miscommunication pertaining to her desired image as an artist with the I.R. Team. After meeting with producer and fellow rapper T.I. , visiting Grand Hustle Records,  Iggy began recording with G.H.R. while managed by Interscope. Stuck between two crossings, Iggy later decided to sign with Grand Hustle and leave the Interscope crowd behind. In the interview above, the artist conveyed her struggle to find a focus for the themes of her music and also gain respect. Iggy's goal is to take the ignorant, vulgar, ratchet music that defines much of Hip Hop, while retaining complex lyricism. 

      

       What I like about Iggy the most is that she is who she wants to be, a rare gem, if you will, especially in an industry that values a specific image.  Perhaps the reason I relate to and admire her, lies in the desire to learn and grow in everything she does. In her two mixtapes, Ignorant Art and the Glory E.P. ,  she employs strikingly contrasting sounds and approaches to the songs. On her first mixtape, beats were more electronic, sticking to the type of preferred club music in the Aussie's homeland. With the ratchet lyrics accompanied by the electronic samples, Iggy Azalea created a mixtape to shock people who doubted her back home. In addition, she doesn't escalate her confidence to arrogance. She wants to learn from those more experienced in producing and songwriting. On the Glory E.P. she collaborated with pop sensations Robin Thicke, and Mike Posner, among several other artists. In an interview with HipHop DX, she illuminates her humility in describing her experience working with Thicke: 

"Like I said before, he is a songwriter and he has great melodies. He can lay down a track seven different ways and I would just do it one way so I am really learning a lot from him. He is teaching me about songwriting. It’s great watching him." -Iggy Azalea

In the interview the rapper also stressed the importance to share with her audience that:

"I just want to experiment and be great. Pusha T told me that people aren’t making records.  Making a record is challenging. It’s not easy. Everyone acts like making a song for the radio or making that B.o.B. stuff is so easy, but when you actually sit down and do it, it’s fucking hard as hell. It’s so hard. That is just what I was trying to do and learn more about it. I put it on the Glory EP so people can hear. That’s why I did it." -Iggy Azalea 

      Also contributing to her innovative image, Iggy Azalea doesn't up hold the typical female sentimentality of love and relationships, writing many songs about the topics. As she stated in a radio interview, she does not put personal areas of her life into her music, until the relationship, or drama is over. She believes that some aspects of life are meant to be kept private, which only furthers her respectability as an artist. What I'm really getting at is that Iggy Azalea takes risks as an artist, who could easily strive to fit in and secure her position in hip hop. When listening to her music, expect to be provoked, and remember to closely analyze what she presents to you, because "if you say it the right way, it doesn't matter what the words are" (Iggy Azalea, HipHop DX).  By employing this idea in her music, Iggy Azalea makes her tunes high art. Some argue that hip hop is of vapid substance since the music prominently displays an interest in money, drugs, violence, and sex. However, as Jay-Z argues in his book Decoded, many hip hop songs consist of the same subject matter, but the artist alters the phraseology to rebirth the meaning. In the same way, Shakespearean sonnets consist of similar subject matter,  such as love and warfare, yet the playwright wrote the pieces distinctly, making each sonnet's nuance intriguing. Iggy Azalea not only exemplifies this claim, but epitomizes it. 

The World Is Yours, Take it Iggy

    
     

Be sure to check out Iggy Azalea's debut album, The New Classic