We’ve barely discussed Iggy Azalea in years. The last time we talked about her was when Quimby wrote about how Iggy’s photos were hacked and put online – I genuinely felt bad for Iggy in that particular instance, but in general, no, I don’t have much sympathy for Iggy coming to America from Australia and deciding she was going to do cultural blackface and adopt an American-rapper persona and all of that. I mean, it worked for a time… until it didn’t. And Iggy hasn’t been relevant for much in years. LOL – as I was looking through our archives, I came across this story which I had totally forgotten! Iggy thought it was racist when people called her BECKY oh my God. Okay, anyway, all of this to say that I am surprised to see Iggy on the cover of the September issue of Cosmopolitan because… why is she on the cover? I guess Beckys always get second chances. And third chances. And fourth chances. You can read her cover profile here. Some highlights:
On leaving the big-name record labels to become an independent artist: “I guess I’m sort of my own boss, well I am my own boss…I should say that with authority: I am my own boss.”
On making a comeback: “You get as many shots as you are able to persevere for in life, no matter what you do. You get as many chances as you’re willing to sit there and f–king really fight for it tooth and nail. And I’m not going to stop fighting for a second chance until somebody f–king gives me one, and then I’m not going to f–k it up.”
On her feelings that cultural appropriation is subjective: “You could ask one person of the same race, ‘’Does this affect you?’ and they will say yes. But another person will say no. They could be from the same place, same everything, but have different perspectives about it.”
On being unapologetic about who she is: “I’m still going to make the same type of music and still be ridiculous and larger than life. So I can’t be that f–king sorry about it.”
On describing her fans as free thinkers: “They have to be because if you thought what everybody else thought, you probably wouldn’t be a fan of mine.”
On being defensive of her views on privilege in the past: “I would hit back and say, ‘What about this stuff I had to go through?’ because I wanted to talk so much about my experiences of things I didn’t have, and I think it felt like I wasn’t acknowledging that there is white privilege and there is institutionalized racism. It seemed to a lot of people like I was living in this bubble or was unaware of all these things that people have to experience.”
On handling critics and backlash: “You want to be right so bad because you feel like you’re justified, your emotions are so real. It’s hard to say ‘Okay, I handled that in a bad way.’”
On looking back at her early 20s: “There’s a part of me that doesn’t necessarily dispute everything I’ve said. But I definitely feel like, Who the f–k is that person? It’s that time in your life when you think I’m a real grown-up and I know everything, and you can’t tell me s–t…The older I get, the less I f–king know about anything.”
It strikes me that she’s sort of a serial self-saboteur and she’s only now realizing some of the absolute nonsense she spewed. I thought her answer about white privilege was remarkably honest, although I wish she had simply admitted that she failed to acknowledge her own privilege and the privilege around her, rather than couching it in “this is the criticism other people had of me.” I also think her answer on cultural appropriation is… not great. I was going to say some words about how she sounds like she’s on her way to understanding the larger concepts of cultural appropriation, privilege, and even white fragility, but maybe not.
What else? She says her management team “encouraged” her to go to a mental health retreat two years ago, which sounds like a vague reference to rehab but probably was not. I think she was really just screwing up her own life at a terrible level and her people were like “yikes, we need to get her out of public view for a while.” So is Iggy still canceled or what? I honestly don’t care enough to declare her “still canceled” or “comeback pending.”
Photos by Eric Ray Davidson for Cosmopolitan, sent from promotional Cosmopolitan email.
