Opinion of Iggy Azalea

[Beet]

She seems to get more crap as a white female rapper than white male rappers do. I don't understand why sjw's could still celebrate Eminem getting a Grammy after he threatened to rape her, but it's not really my area of expertise.

[Beet]

Beyond awful. Talk about her music all you want - unlike other white rappers, like Slug or Macklemore, she blatantly tries to appropriate and exploit African-American culture to make money. Slug had his story-telling ability, Eminem had funny quips, Yelawolf has "redneck rap", and Macklemore has a SJW/indie-pop edge to him. However, Iggy Azalea has a stunning lack of substance that doesn't set her apart from any other rapper, and seems to only be getting by on the color of her skin.

grossly misogynistic SJWs.

lol what

Let's not pretend they don't have a history of disproportionately going after young women.

Get the f**k out of here. There's a huge difference between a black American appropriating a Cockney accent and a white American adopting an African-American/Atlanta accent.

Sure, but Goldfield's point was about misogyny specifically. I respect your knowledge on this subject, so I'll ask you this as from a student to teacher (and nathan feel free to chime in as well) do you think there's any reason why the numerous rappers you held up as "good" rapper alternatives to a problematic female rapper, are all men?

[Beet]

Ok, so basically the rap world is still so male-dominated that once we start talking about any subset (such as "white rappers with ways to set themselves apart") we get an overwhelmingly if not exclusively male group. (Not that that excuses any of Iggy's appropriation as you've outlined.)

[Beet]

This is one of the weirdest threads in quite awhile. I don't think I've seen this many strawmen or bizarre arguments in a long time and it's not even over something important or relevant. The most weird being the idea that SJWs are fans of Eminem, WTF? Not to mention Eminem ceased being relevant long before SJWs were even a thing.

No one said SJWs are fans of Eminem... but a number of news articles appeared saying that SJWs on Twitter were celebrating when Eminem won a grammy that Iggy Azalea was expected to win. Granted, they were more celebrating Iggy's loss than Eminem's win, but the idea that either one of them is much better than the other is pretty suspect, IMO. I would hardly say a guy who's still winning awards and putting out hit songs is irrelevant.

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If it's so low on your list of priorities, then why do you care so much? Sawx and R2D2 have done a pretty good job in this thread explaining why people dislike her... It's infuriating for black women when a white woman comes along and does the exact same thing (not just being in the rap genre, but all of the straight up imitation like Sawx said) with less talent and then gets massively rewarded for it in a way they never do. If I were a black woman, it would be impossible to even think about her without being reminded of racism...

[Beet]

The trouble with it is as a concept is that unless you are being really careful there's a risk that you start heading back into a previous and rather less enlightened era of cultural criticism; the idea that certain forms of culture are entirely the property of certain peoples (and may actually be innate to them on some level), that culture can be 'polluted' by outsiders and so on. It's not a very long journey from there to Das Judenthum in der Musik, and it should be noted that there are stations further down the line than that...

Right, this is why I've always been firmly critical of the phrase 'cultural appropriation'. It gets thrown around for everything from stereotyping to whitewashing to... this. Even if one were to completely throw out the idea of cultural appropriation though, one can see why Iggy's success upsets people.

[Beet]

I have many thoughts about Iggy Azalea and cultural appropriation, here are some of them:

Iggy Azalea is terrible. Her rapping is derivative, the beats she uses are derivative etc. She's popular because of her image rather than her music. There's no shortage of female rappers in hip-hop. There's a shortage of marketable female rappers in hip-hop. It's not a coincidence that there are very few black female rappers in the mainstream. It's a reflection of racism and sexism.

Yes, the award for top female rap artist apparently hasn't even been given out since 2004.

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Not really, given that this is one of the most common charges about Iggy, it would be surprising if it didn't come up. You clearly have a lot of thoughts about it, as do many others on the forum.

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Sure, but no one approves of plagiarism in any form. Adding the dimension of culture to it changes the dynamics and sometimes makes it worse, but sometimes makes plagiarism almost impossible, as well. If you're trying to plagiarize an entire culture using elements already widely known to be associated with that culture, then it's also impossible to hide what you're doing.

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I sort of agree with you, but then I don't think Iggy's disavowals are really that threatening because hip-hop is obviously associated with black culture and regardless of what she says the association is firmly entrenched to the extent that it would take decades to change- and even then, it's origins by American blacks are too well known ever to be swept away. And the stuff that Iggy does is obviously hip hop and so it's obviously standing on the shoulders of the Black community- I mean, T.I. seems to be the one who gave her her break, so she literally might not have her career without him. Whether she or Macklemore specifically say this or not is much, much less important, IMO, than their actual art.

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I agree with this.

As for Simfan's comment, I don't it should really be dismissed with a "that's obvious." Such a basic statement as "how cultures form" is the subject of entire academic disciplines... but more to the point here, the implications of his statement are complex and have implications for power, andI've never seen any social justice person who complains about cultural appropriation really grapple with that side of the equation, besides simply saying stuff like, "I never said white people can't do X Y Z".