Pop Art

"I had to leave Australia because nobody would take what I wanted to do seriously,” Amethyst Amelia Kelly (aka Iggy Azalea), 22-year-old signee to both Mercury and Grand Hustle Records, says bluntly.  Sydney-born to a comic book artist and a cleaner, Kelly left Australia for the United States effectively on her lonesome when she was just 16 to pursue her aspiration – to be, in a noun, a rapper.

She initially stayed in Miami, Florida, before settling for a period in Atlanta, Georgia, where Southern hip-hop consolidated its hold - Atlantan rapper T.I. is apparently stewarding the conception of Azalea's hitherto unreleased debut record, The New Classic.  Kelly took her accent with her; her pseudonym came from her family dog and the street she grew up on: Iggy the dog, Azalea the Street. After several freestyle successes on YouTube, the video for her standalone single Pu$$y launched Azalea's trajectory: “You know bitches envy me Cause you won't get rid of me When you cum, I run This cat got you missin' me Bad Boys get a mouth full of pussy aka Listerine“ sang she.

In a genre dominated by men and indirectly by male sexuality, the towering Australian doesn't consider herself an outsider. “I think maybe sometimes people overanalyze things. Not people in the industry necessarily, but perhaps people who write about it or have to look at it and be a little more introspective than others that just kind of take it for surface level, and I think, you know, most people aren't really sitting down thinking or taking too much time to think about like sort off all this sociology shit, and you know, how to fix it or what's changing or racial shit,” explains Azalea.

Thus, by early 2012, Azalea was featured on the cover of hip-hop tome XXL as part of its annual “Top 10 Freshmen List” (observe that's Freshmen); a coverspace previously occupied by Lupe Fiasco, Wiz Khalifa, Kendrick Lamar, Yelawolf, and Lil B. Azalea then posted the video for Murda Bizness, the intended lead single for hitherto unreleased debut album The New Classic, on her YouTube account. The song features her Grand Hustle label-boss T.I., and flushes through the motifs: the color, the fascination with gap-toothed, denim-on-fluro-on-concrete urban alienation, and the sexuality the rapper wields like a can of mace. “XXL's ran by a white woman, did you know that? The editor is a white woman, so it's kind of like… I don't know if anybody else looks into it all the time as deep as maybe some people think they do, but to me it's always been people have just said, 'I like that song Pu$$y, it's really catchy, I like your flow on it, I like that the beat doesn't sound like anybody else's beat, I think you have balls to go make that video and it's cool and I fuck with it,” she drawls.

Azalea's Warhol reference begs his most immediate and burned-out quote; “everyone will be famous for 15 minutes”, a concept more vital to social networking in the 21st century than fiber-optic cables. Azalea's skeptics (including but not limited to contemporaries Eve, Alazae, and the burst sewer main that is Azealia Banks' twitter feed) are more than willing to rationalize her career as little more than a crackle in the hiss of Internet hype. Azalea is a model for Wilhelmina models, and her body's shape and color are routinely used as blog-meat. Relentless speculation about the authenticity of Azalea's buttocks alone has generated the level of gossip-pulp lesser indie acts would dream of in their own right; in a unique and perverse way, the debate over whether her rear is real or manufactured by plastic surgery loosely echoes more spiteful discussions about the authenticity of her as a rapper and a musician.

Azalea's relationship with alt-rapper of the minute A$AP Rocky was a hype-spike in its own right; and the ASAP tattoo on her index fingers, and her getting it crossed out after their relationship's demise, was internet flaming for weeks. Comment-box chatter about Azalea not only orbits her body, say - but her body as a function of a mark her lover had made on it. Certainly, the lead-in question: “I googled your name while researching this article…” warrants a tired-but-patient response “and you got a million pictures of my butt?” from the rapper. “I think it is annoying to see that dumb stuff, and yeah it is annoying to be objectified, yeah it is annoying that there's a million pictures of my butt… but at the same time… people are always going to interpret shit weird, or like things for different reasons, and fuck it. If you like my butt, you like my butt, at least you like something. I just have to look at it like that, or it'd be so frustrating,” Azalea affirms.

I think that this is the thing with art… not to compare myself to anyone, but like – people can look at Picasso, or Andy Warhol… you can like Andy Warhol for a million different reasons, you might like him because you like the way he thinks, or you might think he's daft, or you might think he's brilliant,” says Azalea. “You might see something else, or you might like it because you like Campbell's Soup – you can like something for a number of different reasons. Maybe you get what the artist was trying to say, or maybe you don't… maybe you just want to fucking stare at my ass in the video… but it all balances… and I think it's all necessary,” she says.

Contrast to Azalea's assertion can be found as proximate on Azalea's ex-lover A$AP Rocky's Goldie: “Open up your legs, tell me how it taste And them niggas talkin' shit so tell them “tell it to my face, Tell that bitch, hop up on my dick, rolled up on her quick In a six, told her suck the dick, motorboat her tits I'm the shit.” Which prompts the question – does Azalea ever feel objectified, or the subject of discussions you wouldn't have to be the subject of if you were a man in hip-hop? “If I was a man in the world, I wouldn't have to be subjected to discussions that I am subjected to as a women in the world, it's not just hip-hop,” she emphasizes. “Yes, I think the world objectifies women, and I think the world makes us part of this discussion that I'd rather not be a part of at times, but it almost works in reverse – makes me come and make a song like Pu$$y, like fuck you guys. If I'm going to be a part of these conversations, then it's going to be on my own terms in the world… not just rap, of course we're talking about rap because that's my platform to express myself, if I wasn't rapping I'd always be doing something, in some other medium I'd be doing the same shit,” she says.

Does she feel objectified, reduced to her sex in a genre dominated by the vocalization of male desire? But does she actively identify as a feminist or an activist? “Somebody asked me this the other day at a dinner party, because they saw my tattoo and it's Venus and they were like 'are you a feminist?' and I was like –'I don't know, no? I don't think I'm a feminist'… I don't know. I hate to put labels on things. I don't think I'm a feminist. I think I'm just a woman who… is aware enough to see the way we can offend other people, and I'm aware enough to see the way media affects people too. I know I can be as powerful as they are. To me, I feel, just as a person – I never really liked the message I was seeing, it didn't make me feel comfortable, and I wanted to make sure there can be other women that women or people can look out and be inspired by, and start to think for themselves. Even with Pu$$y – am I really trying to tell you something – no! but it's so overtly sexual that it still made you talk, 'can she say pussy?' I think if you're an artist you make people have conversations, that's all you want really – is for you to have a conversation. I'm not a feminist, I'm just a woman that thinks the image out of women is very one dimensional and I think we should have other alternatives and I wanna be one of them and I wanna be someone that sparks for other people, men and women, to talk about… maybe making some changes. That's all.”