14 DAY TRIAL // Last month at the 2015 Grammy Awards, Eminem won Best Rap Album for “The Marshall Mathers LP2,” which made him the only rapper to have won the title 6 times. Iggy Azalea was also nominated in the same category and some insiders thought her capable of the night’s biggest upset.
Rumor has it she thought she’d win too, especially since she’d beat Eminem to the punch at the American Music Awards 2014 late last year. It’s a good thing she didn’t, she says in an interview with Power 106 Los Angeles.
“People hate me enough”
For a long time now, Iggy has been battling accusations of cultural appropriation, stemming from the fact that she’s a white, middle-class woman from Australia rapping in a fake American accent, about things that she can only have second-hand knowledge of.
The way she sees it, if she’s guilty of cultural appropriation, so is Eminem, because he too is a white rapper. Iggy forgets that Em is, at the very least, from America.
They should get the same kind of respect, or if not, they should be equally criticized. Because she’s the only one who gets called out for appropriation, while Eminem is showered in praise about how he’s a “rap god,” as he boldly called himself on one of his most recent tracks, she finds the situation “ironic.”
And speaking of Em, she’s happy she didn’t win the Grammy, just like the proverbial fox that really didn’t want to eat those grapes because they were sour.
“I did not want to win that award,” she says. “My speech would have been like, ‘[expletive] this! I don’t want it! Take it! Get away from me!’. I’m glad I didn’t win because people already hate me enough. I do not need to be hated any more. Are you ever going to leave me alone? I lost. You should be happy. [expletive]. Bye.”
The Iggy backlash
Had Iggy settled for being a mainstream artist, a halfbreed between pop and rap, she would not have come under such serious fire. However, she continued to irk fans and industry people by insisting she was the real deal, that her rap persona wasn’t an act, that she was legit.
When she wasn’t defending herself as some sort of rap goddess in interviews, she would pick fights on Twitter with whomever she happened to cross paths, but most often with Azealia Banks, who also happened to be one of her biggest critics in terms of the cultural appropriation claim.
Eventually, Iggy gave up social media and apparently decided to take some time off from doing interviews, to wait for this to blow over. She can’t seem to stick to her decision though, because here she is again, comparing herself to Eminem and demanding equal treatment and respect.
She also forgets that Em has been around for years, whereas she could still prove to be a flash in the pan.