Iggy Azalea Vs. Black Culture: Australian Rapper Found Guilty In Feud With Azealia Banks?

It’s certainly been a strange year for Australian rapper Iggy Azalea. Amid such breakout moments like her Grammy Nomination for Best Rap Album or the success of her hit track “Fancy,” the 24-year-old star has come under fire from the hip-hop community at large in recent weeks, lead by rapper Azealia Banks.

Their claim? Azalea is responsible for the “theft” of so-called “black culture.” And now, many websites across the Internet have weighed in with their verdict, choosing Banks’ side in an argument.

Music.mic, for example, is very quick to criticize Iggy. “Azalea has found fame by stealing pieces of black culture, including hip-hop and rap,” the site writes. “She puts a generic spin on others’ work and serves it to the white masses, which earned her a Grammy nomination for a Best Rap Album (a questionable move considering her blatant appropriation). And as Banks has pointed out, Azalea hasn’t used her visibility to bring to light the race issues that have plagued the country as of late.”

Music.mic also cites Iggy’s apparent lack of freestyling ability as evidence that Azalea lacks true hip-hop talent:

“Unsurprisingly, a lot of people noticed Azalea’s recycling and her inability to perform on the spot, something that’s expected of most talented rappers. The look on her face when asked to freestyle? The kind of look when your mom asks if you took out the trash and you haven’t.”

Complex meanwhile also piles on the charges, calling Iggy Azalea a “grinch who stole hip-hop” claiming her music is nothing more than a combination of pale imitations of verses and swiped beats:

“The blonde Australian jumped to the top of the pop charts rapping in a jarring imitation of a rapper from the American South over a fake version of a DJ Mustard beat earlier this year, and it’s propelled her to superstardom. At once an intruder in hip-hop’s house and a student of its every dropped “g,” Iggy personified audacity, a bull switching into a china shop built on a fault line.”

But as reported by Inquistr, there are many in the rap community that support Azalea, as was the case when Ja Rule came to Iggy’s defense of her Grammy Nominations. “I think [Iggy Azalea] deserves [her Grammy nominations],” Ja Rule said, “because she had the No. 1 record for like 10 weeks… And when you look at the landscape of what’s out there as far as female MC’s, it’s not a lot. It’s basically her and Nicki Minaj and nothing else.”

In the end, the case against Iggy Azalea may all boil down to one thing: jealousy. And that is something not likely to evaporate anytime soon.

What do you think? Is Iggy Azalea guilty of usurping black culture for her personal success?

[Iggy Azalea photo via Color Lines]