Posted on 06/20/2014 1:09:25 PM PDT by nickcarraway
Why Iggy Azalea’s music is so popular and problematic.
hen asked about Forbes’ claim that hip-hop is run by a white, blond, Australian rapper named Iggy Azalea, incumbent queen bee Nicki Minaj laughed hysterically. The financial magazine may be qualified to calculate the $250 million valuation of Nicki’s Myx Fusions Moscato wine coolers, Nicki reasoned, but only the hip-hop community can bequeath the throne to Iggy.
One week later, Iggy Azalea became the only artist since the 1964 Beatles to have her first two singles occupy the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart, and the fourth female emcee to hit No. 1 on the chart. Nicki has yet to claim the No. 1 spot.
However, the coronation of Iggy as one of the most successful rappers in history has occurred without much support from the imagined hip-hop community or from black people not invested in her brand. Funkmaster Flex has called her music “trash,” and Iggy’s hit singles have received little airplay on Top 40 “urban,” hip-hop radio stations. Reviews of her album The New Classic have been lukewarm at best. Even XXL, which made her the first female inductee of the magazine’s Freshman Class, admits that the music doesn’t live up to the hype.
If Iggy isn’t a great rapper, why is she so popular? Is it her whiteness? And is her reign part of a larger industry plot to whitewash black music with the likes of Justin Timberlake and Robin Thicke?
Iggy’s meteoric rise is due, in part, to the music industry’s willingness to promote only a handful of super-sexy female artists. The twerk videos, cake Instagrams and a track literally named “P---y” is a recipe for profit in a hypersexist marketplace. It has worked so well that men and women are buying tickets to Iggy concerts with
(Excerpt) Read more at theroot.com ...
Guess they gonna haveta have another Million Man March...................
The majority of the hip hop audience has been white for a long time. Eventually the labels were going to figure out that the white kids were buying the music and the attitude not the color.
The prominent has-been, Funkmaster Flex, was more than happy to sell records to Caucasians, but he is upset when Caucasians want to make records.
I mean I know that is part of the Iggy lore, the bare chested performer and all, but seriously, he's 80 years old or something.
So Iggy’s a white rapper. Big whoop. Eminem was a white rapper also.
There’s a word used for the majority of the rap music audience:
Wigger.
You see, there has always been a certain class of whites who get off on racist black entertainment.
Years ago it was artists like Stepin Fetchit and Snowflake who amused the whites. Now its Kayne West and Ice Cube and thugs like that.
Everybody black and white knows if you want to sell a million records, you have to have white kids buy it. Period
Blacks American culture is a joke. They want black only exclusiveness yet demand everyone cater to and include them. When whites enter their cultural arena they are accused of theft and exploitation yet they have no problem entering anyone else culture making their typical demands and catering.
You don’t get to be exclusive while demanding others be inclusive and complaining about race exposes they petty and racist nature of black hip hop and black America. This is why blacks outside of America think you are a total joke and complete losers. Yours is a culture of failure and your supposed celebration of it through music is nothing more than the promotion of vileness and evil. Have fun in your black bed with your black car black music and wannabe black world. Nobody else wants to be in it but idiot white kids that grow up and see it for the joke it is and move on.
RIP to the real black entertainers of the world who approached their struggles with creativity and overcame real hardships. They turn in their graves with what you have done off their backs.
I had to read this just so I could comment that I have no idea what any of this tried to tell us.
Everyone listens to Funkmaster Flex.....
Is that the kid from “Married with Children”?
Who’s ‘whitewashing’ rap? Debbie Harry is the singer of the first rap song to ever chart, Rapture. That was a long time ago now.
Big deal..a white rapper..tampons have a white rapper covering them also
I guess they forgot about Marshall Mathers aka Eminem. Little white kid from Detroit who outsold nearly all of them and managed to still be a dad to his little girl. How dare a white kid take part in such blackness.
The so called hip hop world is so afraid of losing their identity. Meanwhile the pop mindset has invaded and all that sells are garbage hooks over repetitive beats talking about stuff no decent person gives a crap about. Its hilarious to see the rednecks blasting this crap while riding around in their farm trucks yet the hip hop racists want to maintain its blackness and shallow identity.
The hip hop crowd can take their music and culture and shove it. Send it back to the ash heap where it belongs. They can’t all be Saul Williams, but I wish they were. Maybe then we wouldn’t have these tiny dick egos hiding under their beds at the thought of someone not like them being successful at “their” thing.
While rock and roll certainly derived from black blues, few successful white rockers sounded like black bluesmen. The Beatles certainly didn't need to record any blues songs to become famous and wealthy. Ditto for the Stones. Everybody is affected by everybody else. Black jazz musicians were influenced by white, classical musicians. White musicians were influence by black musicians. That's the way of the world.
That’s the same for black rhythm and blues and jazz musicians from fifty years ago. A number protested when white musicians recorded their music. I can’t recall any white musicians protesting when Ray Charles and other black musicians recorded country music or white standards. Likewise, I can’t recall any black musicians protesting white people buying their recordings.
The difference in talent between Nat King Cole or Ray Charles and Kanye West and other rappers is the difference between bright, shining diamonds and lumps of you know what.
Rapper's Delight was the first to chart. Rapture was the first to hit #1. But to me it sounds like a Blondie song, with some rapping, not a rap song.
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