The hip-hop scene has its fair share of vibrant and divisive characters, but Australian-born Iggy Azalea is one of the most controversial personalities of the contemporary era.

Azalea has caught the ire of music critics, feminists and anti-racist activists of all kinds. They denounce her lyrics, alleged racist tweets and her “mimicry of sonic blackness”. They also argue that she displays, at best, an uncomfortable ignorance about the complexities of race issues. But what she represents is more complex than a white girl who doesn’t think before she speaks: actually, she is the inevitable product of neoliberal capitalism, and in some ways she is much a victim of it as a culprit.

Azalea in Detroit. Photograph: MediaPunch/Rex

Azalea – real name is Amethyst Amelia Kelly – spent her formative years in a small town called Mullumbimby in the 1990s and early 2000s. Back then, hip-hop is ubiquitous in pop culture and she loves it: she admires the style and audacity of the black artists she watches on Channel V and YouTube. She wants to be part of that scene and be very successful in it, even though she’s white and female.

She thinks to herself, “I want to dance like Missy Elliot”. She puts on an American accent when she raps because that’s what the vast majority of Australian musicians do when they sing – kind of like little kids who put on an American accent when they play pretend – because the world of the imagination in her country is dominated by US products. She also has no reason to think any more critically about her attitude towards black people in hip-hop than she or most of her neighbours feel they need to think about Aboriginal people or their attitude to Australia’s multi-ethnic make-up.

Young Azalea probably thinks she’s more accepting than most, particularly given her ongoing enthusiasm for a predominantly black musical style, and when she raps for her friends and they laugh at her and tell her she sucks, maybe even that rap music sucks, who’s the racist then, huh?

The political context in which Azalea grew up in was certainly peculiar: the 1990s saw a strong rightward shift in Australia, coupled with the development of a narrative about racism and national identity focusing on immigration and fear. The most striking element of the political discourse back then was the explicit insistence that xenophobic proposals were not racist. As Lebanese-Australian academic Ghassan Hage argued, supporters of hardline politicians saw “racism as something ugly and bad, and they do not perceive themselves as ugly and bad.”

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On fansites across the internet, you can still find early self-released videos in which Azalea films herself freestyling over the top of a beat apparently played through an off-screen boom-box. The videos are short, low quality and as amateur as they come, but they are most startling because of how cleanly they cut through the gloss. Suddenly, she isn’t Iggy Azalea, Billboard chart-topping record-breaking rapper with masses of money and a huge international following; instead, you can almost see the 16 year-old girl posing and performing to herself in the mirror, imagining stardom and success far away from her rural surroundings.

At this point, perhaps the only thing that separates her from any other teenage wannabe is that she is single-minded enough to put money behind those naive dreams and run away from home, literally, to see if she can make it work. Perhaps it’s precisely that naivety which keeps her sticking at it long after someone slightly more aware of themselves and the odds stacked against them would have gone home. Eventually she gets picked up by rapper TI, already famous in his own right, who agrees to mentor her, and the partnership pushes her into the limelight.

From here, the racial dynamic becomes more complex, and the involvement of TI and the (male, black) heavyweights of the hip-hop scene in cosigning Azalea’s work and supporting her career seems kind of baffling – particularly given the controversies surrounding some of her lyrics and comments on social media. That is, until you consider just how much money she – and consequently, they – are making.

If you’re in any doubt about that, and about how wilful ignorance is flaunted as an advantage by Azalea, perhaps we should let her and TI speak for themselves in this interview:

TI: Hey man, this motherfucker [Azalea] is crazy. I’m talking about – she’s – she’s incredibly insane. Unbelievably belligerent and no-one would understand, unless they sat here for just a tidbit of time … I’ve been to prison, I’ve been to traps, I’ve been to ghettoes across America [...] the flats in London, I’ve been to the motherfuckin’ yards in Jamaica, and this motherfucker [he points to Azalea] is wow. She crazy. She’ll say anything. All I can do is set music behind her belligerence. That’s the best thing I can do. So that’s what you can expect.

Iggy: Ignorant yet artistic.

TI: There you go. Ignorant, artistic belligerence set to music.

Iggy: Purposeful ignorance.

TI: And you know what, we’re going to make millions upon millions until billions of dollars off of it.

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In contemporary America, success in overcoming adversity (and often systemic racism) is most often represented in financial terms, and it’s a recurring theme in hip-hop. Consider Kanye West:

I treat the cash the way the government treats AIDS I won’t be satisfied til all my niggas get it, get it?

Or Dr Dre:

Get your money right Don’t be worried ‘bout the next man – make sure your business tight Get your money right Go inside the safe, grab your stash that you copped tonight Get your money right Be an international player, don’t be scared to catch those red eye flights You better get your money right Cause when you out there on the streets, you gotta get it – get it

Or even TI himself:



Regardless what haters say I’m as real as they come I’m chasin that paper baby however it come I’m singin a song and movin yay by the ton I bet you never seen a nigga gettin money so young

Following his support of Azalea, TI has been accused of “caping” for the white girl by black women asking why he is not supporting a black female rapper instead. When challenged about this, his response has been to talk about the need for “colour-blindness” in America – an appeal to the idea that race should be entirely invisible instead of acknowledged and respected, and one which resonates uncomfortably for anti-racist activists, who are all too accustomed to hearing such appeals used to justify the wind back of progressive efforts to address racial disparity.

Further, the interplay between gender and race occurring here only makes sense when you view it through the lens of neoliberal capitalism. Azalea thinks she is making art; TI, and the various producers and heavyweights who are behind her may legitimately appreciate her performance and her songwriting, but they also know they’re making money.

Iggy Azalea onstage in Austin, Texas. Photograph: Josh Brasted/WireImage

There’s little solidarity for the struggling black female rapper when there’s a massive market for the attractive white girl — particularly one who isn’t afraid to take her clothes off, who raps like a Southern black woman and unashamedly says dumb things in public that gets the media talking. Sexually provocative women sell, outrageous and politically incorrect content sells, and Azalea is a combination package.

From that point of view, all of the following propositions may simultaneously be true:



• Iggy Azalea can say things which may be considered to be offensive at best

• Iggy Azalea actually does not understand why people say she is racist

• Iggy Azalea’s mentors understand that she can make money for them in part because of her ignorance (which she’s unashamed of)

• Iggy Azalea’s mentors also understand that she can make money for them because she is a sexually provocative woman

• Iggy Azalea’s mentors are black men who are likely themselves victims of racism

That there isn’t a modicum of sexism involved in the response to Azalea is also highly questionable. Consider the reception she, a highly sexualised white woman, has received for her accent and a handful of problematic comments, in comparison to that of Eminem: insanely popular from the get-go in spite of being white, supported by many of his black peers, producing lyrics packed full of rape and murder and graphic gendered violence, and yet who still has such longevity and respect in the scene that only a couple of years ago he was declared the “king of hip-hop” by Rolling Stone magazine.

None of this absolves Iggy from the money she is making off her notoriety, nor is it to suggest that we shouldn’t be calling racism when we see it, but simply to argue that Azalea is an effect of a messed up world, not the cause.

In 2012, female workers in the US were earning 77% that of their male counterparts. Non-Anglo women, however, were also more likely to be without health insurance; have higher mortality rates from diseases such as breast cancer; a higher occurrence of HIV; higher infant, fetal and perinatal mortality rates; and were far more likely to be the target of sexual assault — particularly if they are Native American. In Australia, the disparity between Indigenous and non-Indigenous Australians in the health system is only the beginning of the story.

Haranguing Azalea and over again for her thoughtlessness isn’t going to get us any closer to solving the root problems: the systemic inequality perpetuated by capitalism over colonised and marginalised peoples; the sexism entrenched in the capitalist process in which black women fare significantly worse than white women, and the particularly twisted cluster of exploitation in which a black man can make a fortune off a single-minded white woman taking pride in her own ignorance.