She is almost always flanked by black people in her videos, and often has them enact most of the stereotypes which her music relies on: wearing grills on their teeth, t-shirts that read “Drugs not Hugs”, twerking, and in the “Pu$$y” video, a black woman serving her and later a white man looking on at their antics in disgust (a white man also shakes his head at her in the "Fancy" video). She is a well-spoken middle-class Australian woman, yet she raps in the dialect common to African American people of lower socio-economic status. In addition to this problematic aspect of her music, there is the inauthentic racial appropriation which permeates her songs and videos. If an up-and-coming or established male rapper, say Big Sean or Drake, made a song called “Penis” and had endless shots of male crotches, it would be seen as a potentially career-ending joke, but in the case of Iggy Azalea, the female equivalent of this video went viral and launched her career. Watch them below, but be warned, very NSFW:įor those who question whether any particular act is anti-feminist, try and imagine a man doing the same act, or needing to perform that act in order to gain validation in his field. Her early prominent videos for the songs “Pu$$y” and “Two Times” were shameless sexual pandering. If men didn’t find her sexually appealing and women didn’t want to be her in order to be found similarly appealing, she might not have had fame at all.
This positions her as anti-feminist and as projecting a version of womanhood as only validated through the male desiring gaze. Firstly, there is her shameless use of her sexuality to gain attention. Her infectious Summer smash hit “Fancy” has topped the chart for five straight weeks and has sold over 2,3 million copies in the US, and her canny collaboration with YouTube sensation and rising star Ariana Grande on “Problem” has been latched to its tail at number two throughout its reign.īut despite her overwhelming commercial success, the music of Iggy Azalea is problematic on many fronts. Iggy Azalea is currently perched at the top two spots on the Billboard Hot 100 with her first two entries, an incredible feat last accomplished by the Beatles.
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