Iggy was getting ready to headline a huge North Ameri-
can tour. She was being readied for the level of stardom
reached by other pop-music blondes who go by first
names. And then suddenly, she wasn’t.
She lost at the Grammys. Her engagement ended after acheating scandal that played out like reality TV. (Nick was
reportedly caught bragging about sleeping with other
women in a leaked video. Iggy later said she also caught
him on their home security cameras.) The tour was
“rescheduled” and later canceled. She told fans there’d
been a “creative change of heart,” the sort of phrase that
invites internet conspiracy theories. There was talk of a
second studio album—and not surprisingly, record-label
drama—but that got put off indefinitely too. Her Twitter
feuds (Azealia Banks, Q-Tip, Papa John’s) left her perpet-
ually playing one of two roles: the villain or the punch
line. Iggy eventually released some new singles, music
videos, and an EP, but it just wasn’t the same.
Now, though, she’s *really* back—whether you wanther or not—and it’s on her own terms this time. In My
Defense, out now and full of humor, raunch, and bops that
make you want to embarrass yourself at the club, is her
first album since 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,” she says. “I should say that
with authority: I am my own boss.” Iggy sees this as her
second chance, and so what if this isn’t her first second
chance? “You get as many shots as you are able to perse-
vere for in life, no matter what you do,” she says. “You get
as many chances as you’re willing to sit there and fucking
really fight for tooth and nail. And I’m not going to stop
fighting for a second chance until somebody fucking
gives me one, and then I’m not going to fuck it up.”
Iggy’s been going this hard since before she was Iggy,
when she was Amethyst Kelly from Mullumbimby,
Au s t r a l i a , a t ow n t h a t i s i mp o s s i ble t o pr onou nc e
correctly. At age 16, she got on a plane, alone, to Miami. It
was just a vacation with a girlfriend, she told her mom,
but in reality, the friend bailed and Iggy never planned on
coming back. She was going to be a rapper. There was no
backup plan. She networked the hell out of Myspace
Music. She dropped mixtapes, got a record deal, and
opened for Beyoncé.
Today, it’s a fact that if you say “Iggy Azalea” three
times in a mirror, a think piece will appear behind you
waxing philosophical on the definition of “cultural
appropriation” and authenticity. And not without reason.
She is, after all, a white woman profiting off black culture.
She raps with a “blaccent,” which, in her case, is an exag-
gerated Southern drawl that can’t be found in
Australia. When asked about the issues sur-
rounding “speaking black” in a 2013 interview
with Complex, Iggy responded, “If you’re mad
about it and you’re a black person, then start a
rap career and give it a go too.” A few months
before that, Iggy faced backlash from fans
who’d uncovered some old racist tweets she
claimed were jokes. And before that, she had to
write an apology for using the phrase “runaway
slave-master” in a lyric.
If you’ve been reading this waiting to get to
the part where Iggy apologizes for all the
above—sorry, she’s not sorry. (The most sing-
along-able lyric off one of her new songs is “I
started to say sorry / But fuck that shit,” so
yeah.) But listen, she does get it now. Sort of. She
thinks cultural appropriation is subjective,
even though she knows that sounds like a
fucked-up thing to say. “You could ask one per-
son of the same race, ‘Does this affect you?’ and
they will say yes,” she explains. “But another
person will say no. They could be from the same
place, same everything, but have different per-
spectives about it.”
Then again, can you really say sorry and then
keep doing the same shit? (Her question.) “I’m
still going to make the same type of music
and still be ridiculous and larger than life,” she
says. “So I can’t be that fucking sorry about it.”“I’M STILL GOINGTO BE RIDICULOUSAND LARGER
THAN LIFE.
SO I CAN’T BE THAT F*CKINGSORRY ABOUT IT.”114
Cosmopolitan September 2019