Iggy Azalea

Amethyst Amelia Kelly (born 7 June 1990), known professionally as Iggy Azalea is an Australian singer. Azalea's debut studio album, The New Classic (2014), peaked among the top five on several charts worldwide, but received mixed reviews from within the industry. The album eventually topped the Billboard Top R&B/Hip-Hop Albums, making Azalea the first non-American female rapper to reach the top of the chart.After her debut album, Azalea released a slew of singles to build anticipation for her intended second album, Digital Distortion. However, a series of conflicts with her label, as well as personal conflicts, resulted in the project being cancelled. Consequently, Azalea switched labels, releasing the EP Survive the Summer (2018) under Island Records. Further disagreements led to Azalea becoming an independent artist and creating her own label, Bad Dreams, through a distribution deal with Empire. Her second album, In My Defense, was released in 2019, followed by another EP, Wicked Lips, that same year.Azalea's accolades include two American Music Awards, three Billboard Music Awards, an MTV Video Music Award, a People's Choice Award, four Teen Choice Awards and four Grammy Award nominations. Azalea's official YouTube channel has accumulated 3.4 billion views, with 15 music videos receiving over 100 million views on Vevo.

Early life and education
Amethyst Amelia Kelly was born in Sydney and grew up in Mullumbimby, New South Wales. Her father, Brendan Kelly, was an Irish-Australian painter and comic artist,In pursuit of her desire to move to America, Azalea dropped out of high school. She worked and saved the money she earned by cleaning hotel rooms and holiday houses with her mother. She claims to have hated school, which, apart from art class, only made her miserable. She also said she had no friends and was teased for her homemade outfits.

2006–2012: Career beginnings, Glory, and Ignorant Art
When she first arrived in the United States in 2006, she stayed in Miami, Florida, and afterward lived briefly in Houston, Texas. Azalea settled for a few years in Atlanta, Georgia, working with a member of the rap collective Dungeon Family named Backbone. During that period, she met future collaborators FKi and Natalie Sims.On 27 September 2011, Azalea released her first full-length project, a mixtape titled Ignorant Art, saying she made it "with the intent to make people question and redefine old ideals."| quote = "I'm working with a different production company for my album than what I did for my mixtape Ignorant Art, and I don't know who yet. I'm still looking. T.I.'s gonna be helping me with it, kinda like A&Ring, kinda like executive-producing. He called me up and was like, 'Yo.' And I was like, 'Definitely. You're Tip. I love you, of course.' So he's gonna be kinda helping me out, like just kinda reaching out to people and helping me find production and pointing me in the direction of things that I might like. We're gonna start on that next week together. I'll probably fly out to Atlanta and we'll do it in between there because he's weird with traveling and stuff. I understand. We're in touch with each other. I have legal issues, he has legal issues. I get it. So hopefully that will be really dynamic and it'll help speed things along." Azalea reached out to rapper T.I., for the direction of her debut album. T.I. was set to executive produce The New Classic, soon after a phone call the two had. At the time, Azalea was eyeing a summer release for The New Classic: "Hopefully if all goes to plan, my album will be out in June and I'll have it recorded by the end of the month."In April 2012, via her Twitter feed, Azalea announced plans to release an extended play (EP) entitled Glory, later in May: "I'm just onto something right now, the last two weeks and it's glory. Azaleans need something new."On 24 June 2012, Azalea released "Millionaire Misfits", the second offering from her EP Glory; the first being "Murda Bizness". On 21 July, the official music video for "Murda Bizness" was released online. Glory, although not released in May, as it was originally scheduled, was released 30 July 2012. Azalea was also one of the acts on MTV's 2012 Closer to My Dreams Tour, along with Tyga and Kirko Bangz.=== 2013–2014: Breakthrough and The New Classic === In January and February 2013, Azalea worked on tour while still working on her upcoming singles and summer release of The New Classic. She was the opening act for Rita Ora's Radioactive Tour, in the United Kingdom. On 15 April 2013, Vevo announced Azalea as its second LIFT artist of 2013 and that she would film live festival performances, fashion and style pieces and behind-the-scenes interviews as part of the eight-week-long campaign. It was also revealed that the music video for her second single, "Bounce", would premiere on Vevo at the end of the month.On 25 May 2013, Azalea performed an acclaimed carnival themed set on the In New Music We Trust stage as part of Radio 1's Big Weekend in Derry, Northern Ireland. The setlist contained songs from previous EPs and album material such as "Bounce" and "Work". The show was the start of a short set of UK pre-album promotional appearances.Azalea's debut album was slated for an October 2013 release, but in an interview with Australia's Herald Sun she revealed that due to other commitments such as supporting Beyoncé on her Mrs. Carter Show World Tour, her record label would not allow her to release The New Classic until March 2014. She said: "The official date? Fucked if I know! It's done, it's so depressing to say this but it's the beginning of March, it's so far away but I just have to accept that." She explained the reasons behind the delay: "It was supposed to be October but obviously I'm going on tour with Beyoncé and they said I'm not allowed to put an album out while I'm on tour because I'll be trapped in Australia and I won't be able to do any TV appearances and I thought that's fair enough, that's three weeks and then they said 'You can't put an album out around Christmas time, that's a bad time' and I said 'What about January?' 'Well nobody gets back off holidays and then it's the BRIT Awards, you can't release an album, it's terrible for marketing' which brings me to February."On 5 December 2013, an unfinished song by Azalea titled "Leave It", allegedly produced by DJ Mustard, was leaked. After much delay and speculation, The New Classic was finally released on 21 April 2014.On 28 May 2014, The New Classic On 10 December 2014, when reflecting on the year she'd had and the struggles she faced in the years before, Azalea announced plans of an arena tour for 2015 and a second studio album via her Twitter account. The same day, she revealed the title of the tour, The Great Escape Tour, and the concept behind it, which is Azalea picturing herself as "a musical escape artist for people".

2015–2018: Career setbacks and Survive the Summer
Azalea declared she had started to work on her second studio album in January 2015.In October 2015, Azalea revealed the initial title of her second album to be Digital Distortion.On 12 June 2016, Seven Network revealed that Azalea had signed on to be a judge replacing Chris Isaak on The X Factor Australia for its eighth season, broadcast from October to November 2016. On 7 November 2017, Azalea stated that she was not allowed to release music until January 2018, as she signed with a new label.On 8 June 2018, the rapper revealed that Survive the Summer would be an EP. She also stated that the reason behind the postponed release date—originally for 2 June, then 30 June release—was the change of president of her record label, Island Records.On 3 November 2018, Azalea tweeted that she had left Island Records, which she had signed to in 2017,

2019: In My Defense and Wicked Lips
Azalea announced in early February 2019 that she had completed work on her second studio album, In My Defense. She further stated her plans to release it in the spring of that year. On 27 February, Azalea announced that "Sally Walker" would be the first single off of the album. On the same day, her previous single, "Kream", was certified gold for selling 500,000 copies in the US. At the end of March 2019, 14 days after Azalea's new single was released, "Sally Walker" had accumulated over 38 million views on YouTube had a combined total sales of over 82,000 copies sold on all platforms and had debuted on Billboard On 27 September 2019, Azalea announced she would be releasing a new extended play.=== 2020–present: The End of an Era === In the summer of 2020, Azalea announced her third studio album, The End of an Era. On 20 August 2020, Azalea released the original lead single, "Dance Like Nobody's Watching", a collaboration with Tinashe.

Musical style and influences
Although Azalea is Australian, she raps with a Southern U.S. accent.At the age of 11, Azalea was infatuated with hip hop when she heard Tupac Shakur's "Baby Don't Cry (Keep Ya Head Up II)": "It was the song that made me fall in love with music and also what sparked my Tupac fascination. That would later make me pick up my own pen and write songs."

Music videos
Azalea is often noted for her cinema-quality music videos which are often comedic and contain satire. Azalea has paid homage to a number of cult films from the 1990s and early 2000s in her music videos, among the most notable examples being Priscilla, Queen of the Desert (1997) in "Work" (2013), Showgirls (1995) in "Change Your Life" (2013), Clueless (1995) in "Fancy" (2014), Kill Bill (2003) in "Black Widow" (2014), Earth Girls Are Easy (1988) in "Pretty Girls" (2015), and Romy and Michele's High School Reunion (1997) in "Fuck It Up" (2019), among others. Alongside those film references, eras of cinema are referenced in several other videos including the Bollywood-themed video for "Bounce" (2013) and the 1980s cop comedy-inspired video for "Trouble" (2015). Additionally, the video for "Murda Bizness" (2012) is reminiscent of the pageant culture shown in reality series Toddlers & Tiaras.

Azalea has also been credited as a director for some of her music videos and often mentions the importance she attributes to them: "For me, visuals are as important as the music, I just love escapism and giving people something to escape to. To me, that's what art is."

Public image
After initially resisting suggestions to try modeling,== Controversy ==

Accusations of cultural appropriation
In 2012, Azalea caused controversy for her song "D.R.U.G.S", a remix of Kendrick Lamar's "Look Out for Detox", having adapted one of its lyrics to "When the relay starts, I'm a runaway slave / Master", leading her to release a letter online apologizing, stating that it was a "tacky and careless thing to say."After being asked to analyze and compare her speaking and rapping voice, linguistics professor David Crystal said Azalea might be doing it unconsciously to accommodate to the American rapping style, adding: "There are hardly any echoes of [Azalea's] original Australian accent in her speaking voice—just the odd word (e.g. "own", "believe") and inflection. She has developed a mixed accent (like so many people have these days) as a result of her traveling around."In 2021, after Azalea released the music video for her song "Iam the Stripclub", some Twitter commentators accused her of blackfishing or "imitating a black female aesthetic"; fans defended her as simply wearing a tan and having chosen a straight black wig for the video. Azalea called the allegations "ridiculous and baseless" and said that she had worn the same Armani foundation for the past three years "in every video since 'Sally Walker'".

Comments on racism
In 2018, Azalea claimed that the history of racism in the United States causes its audiences to dismiss her, and claimed that she, "grew up in a situation that didn't involve any privilege and I worked really hard", later reiterating on U.S. race relations: "I make 'black' music. I don't want people to think it's not something I care about. I want to make music for girls in the gym."In 2016, Azalea was planning to release her second album titled, Digital Distortion, explaining its concept: addressing the criticisms against her: "some of them were fair and some of them, I think, were unfair. I just think it's interesting that we live in this age of digital distortion where we're all distorting each other and distorting ourselves and our perception of who we all are, and none of it is really accurate anymore."

Personal life
In March 2015, while talking about her body shape with Vogue, Azalea revealed she had undergone breast augmentation, saying, "I did change something: Four months ago, I got bigger boobs! I'd thought about it my entire life", adding she was sick of having to sew padding into her stage costumes and wanted to be able to wear lingerie without wiring. After initially resolving never to discuss it publicly as she didn't want other girls to feel bad about their bodies, she concluded, "But then, I decided I wasn't into secret-keeping."In March 2018, Azalea was approved for permanent residence in the United States.She currently lives in Los Angeles.

Relationships
In late 2011, Azalea began dating American rapper A$AP Rocky, whom she met through American record producer Chase N. Cashe. She confirmed that they were dating in a January 2012 interview with Vibe and, around this time, got the title of Rocky's breakout mixtape ''Live. Love. A$AP'' tattooed on her fingers.She began a relationship with Los Angeles Lakers basketball player Nick Young in November 2013. Azalea and Young were featured in the March 2014 issue of GQ magazine.In 2016, She briefly dated Moroccan-American rapper French Montana.In late 2018, Azalea began dating American rapper Playboi Carti.

Awards and nominations
Iggy Azalea has been nominated for numerous major music awards. Azalea was the first female and first non-American rapper to be featured on XXL's "Top 10 Freshman List".In November 2014, she was placed at number-one on the Maxim Hot 100 list in Australia because "few Aussies, female or otherwise, have had a bigger 2014 than Iggy."

Discography

 * The New Classic (2014)
 * In My Defense (2019)
 * The End of an Era (2021)

Headlining

 * The New Classic Tour (2014)

Cancelled Tours
 * Great Escape Tour (2015)
 * Bad Girls Tour (2018)

Opening act

 * XXL Freshmen Live Tour (2012)* Nas – Life Is Good Tour (2013)* Pitbull - I Feel Good Tour (2021)