Iggy Azalea is one of hip-hop’s biggest stars. What does that say about the future of the genre? (Ashley Landis/European Pressphoto Agency)
First things first, awards season has a new function.
The Grammys, the Oscars and other sparkly Sunday night telecasts where big stars compete for little trophies continue to give our culture industries an opportunity to show the rest of the world how they see themselves. But there’s still a ritual illusion at work, too — the illusion that these academy-voted prizes somehow reflect the mood and values of the greater republic.
Obviously, that’s bogus. These are private business parties designed to radiate an aura of prestige and pad television ratings. So we the people — industrious even in our social-media blathering — have given them a viable new utility. For two years running, we’ve transformed awards season into a valve for our national anxieties about race.
This year’s most passionate Oscar chatter centers around the civil rights drama “Selma” and Hollywood’s reluctance to recognize films that feature black actors playing non-subservient protagonists.
And at Sunday night’s 57th annual Grammy Awards, our most fraught whispers will flit in the direction of Iggy Azalea, a white, 24-year-old Barbarella from Australia who raps with the inflection of a black girl from Atlanta.
While Azalea’s existence as a rapper shouldn’t be all that vexing in 2015, her success has been very much exactly that.
Not counting singing-rapping polymaths such as Lauryn Hill, Azalea is the first female rapper in history to score her own No. 1 single on the American pop charts. And on Sunday, she is up for four Grammy awards, including best rap album, record of the year and best new artist. Regardless of how it all shakes out, the nominations alone should remind us that the American record biz is still chillingly adept at using whiteness to sell blackness.
That felt glaringly overt at last year’s Grammys after Macklemore, an affable white rapper of limited dimension, bested Jay-Z, Kanye West, Drake and Kendrick Lamar for the best rap album trophy. It was a victory even Macklemore admitted he didn’t deserve, and it added a fresh chapter to the enduring pop saga of black erasure, a never-ending story that predates the advent of Elvis and lingers in the shadow of Eminem.
So when Azalea’s bratty hit single “Fancy” reached the top of the charts last summer, it was more of the same — only more complicated.
Here was a blonde from a distant hemisphere, doing her part to expand popular assumptions about what a rapper can look like as she casually floated toward the top of a genre that valorizes outsiders and underdogs.
In a way, Azalea’s desire to rhyme her way to superstardom felt like proof of hip-hop’s vitality as a global pop dialect. But the fact that she actually became a top-selling superstar prompts a more existential question: Who does hip-hop belong to now?
Rap music will always be rooted in the immutable allure of black masculine cool, but it’s no longer an exclusive expression of black urbanity. As the music’s horizons expand, it clings tighter to the vestiges of its radicalism — that anti-authoritarian sneer that’s always provided the music with a magnetism that transcends race.
And it has touched everything. Hip-hop has become so ubiquitous, so all-over-the-place-permeative, that other pop genres now bend toward its sound and attitude as if acting on reflex. Go ahead and scroll around your radio dial. You’ll hear rock bands using 808 drum machines and cowboys trying to rap.
Whether these are signs of the genre’s good health or the symptoms of its imminent implosion, there’s still a warm-fuzziness to the idea that this neighborhood party music, born roughly 40 years ago in the Bronx, now belongs to the entire planet. It’s the rhythm of the human tribe.
And as rap’s borders continue to evaporate, the music’s future is riddled with uncertainties about race. Will tomorrow’s white rappers — and they will be legion — step into the spotlight as virtuous contributors or thoughtless colonizers?
The mandarins of the rap universe haven’t held their tongues on this. In light of Azalea’s ascent, Houston hero Scarface predicted that hip-hop would follow the arc of rock-and-roll, eventually transforming into a musical idiom performed predominantly by and for whites. Questlove, bandleader of the Roots, seemed to be at peace with that idea last summer when he told Time magazine, “We as black people have to come to grips that hip-hop is a contagious culture.” They’re both probably right.
On social media, the dialogue has been much uglier. Snoop Dogg has called Azalea an unprintable, unforgivable name, (then quickly asked for forgiveness), while Q-Tip gave Azalea a scoldy hip-hop history lesson via Twitter. Rushing to her defense each time was T.I., the great Southern rapper and Azalea’s loudest and most respected advocate. (He’s also the executive producer of her debut album, “The New Classic.”)
It’s easy to hear the foul hum of misogyny coursing through a lot of this talk. There are swarms of white dudes out there carefully plotting the coordinates of their rap careers — Mac Miller, Yelawolf, Machine Gun Kelly, Action Bronson — but few have suffered the same level of scrutiny as Azalea.
The most substantive gripes have come from Azalea’s female peers, including Nicki Minaj, one of the most thrilling and imaginative rappers of all time. But like Missy Elliot before her, Minaj is still waiting on her first No. 1 pop single. And then there’s Azealia Banks, a hyper-candid Harlem rapper who’s gone after Azalea on Twitter, questioning her social-media silence regarding the Eric Garner decision.
Because the rap world has failed to create sufficient space for female artists to flourish, the media still lazily pits female artists against one another — and ironically, those unfortunate conditions have made all of this beef chewable. The cannon fire from Minaj and Banks imply that their careers are directly suffering from the erasure that Azalea’s fame perpetuates.
But after parsing Azalea’s rivalries, her alliances, her gender, her race, her blondness, her birthplace and her background, we finally arrive at the fundamental ickiness of her fame: the music.
“The New Classic” doesn’t feel like a collection of rap songs so much as a cartoonish performance of race. It’s heavy on gloating and boilerplate tough-talk, nearly all of which lacks humor or a distinctive point of view.
As for her delivery, it’s a needling imitation of a black Southern voice, with syllables that twang in the wrong direction and vowels that curve into sour shapes. It’s pantomime devoid of personality. An empty white echo.
As hollow as it feels, it’s important to remember that Azalea has every right to strike this pose. But when the industry-folk who draft the Grammy ballots sanctify that pose as an emblem of excellence, we should all feel a twist in our stomachs.
Because while the Grammys have never come close to reflecting our collective taste, more and more Grammy voters appear to be taking their cues from what’s happening down on the sales floor. And then who’s culpable? The machinery pushing Azalea’s music or the multitudes who are buying it?
That supply-demand-chicken-egg mystery will always fog the intersection of art and commerce, so here’s a tidy way to think about this particular moment in pop history: If “Fancy” is the only hip-hop single you purchased last year, you’re an unwitting participant in a tacitly racist marketplace that will not change what it’s selling until we all change what we’re buying.
Yes, audiences will always harbor a desire to see themselves reflected in the music they consume, but the greatest art should also nurture our empathy. It should encourage us to connect with the humanity of experiences separate from our own. We should always be making room for those kinds of experiences — especially when we’re picking winners.
White rappers are obviously allowed to play the game, but they shouldn’t get to win by simply showing up.
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