Editor’s note: This post contains tweets that some may find offensive.
For the last week, hip-hop's white savior with an Australian accent, better known as Iggy Azalea, has been feeling fellow rapper Azealia Banks' fire and brimstone on social media because of her continued appropriation of hip-hop.
During a recent interview with Hot 97, Banks gave an emotional response to the question of why she has a lot of issues with Azalea. One of those issues has to do with Azalea's "cultural smudging": "I feel like in this country, whenever it comes to our things, like black issues or black politics or black music or whatever, there's always this undercurrent of kinda like a 'f—k you.' There's always a 'F—k y'all n—gas. Y'all don't really own s—t. Y'all don't have s—t.'
"That Macklemore album wasn't better than the Drake record," she continued. "That Iggy Azalea s—t isn't better than any f—king black girl that's rapping today. … The Grammys are supposed to be accolades of artistic excellence. Iggy Azalea is not excellent."
Banks also pointed out those organizations, like the Grammys, that continue to allow cultural smudging: "When they give these Grammys out, all it says to white kids is, 'Oh, yeah you're great, you're amazing, you can do whatever you put your mind to.' And it says to black kids, 'You don't have s—t. You don't own s—t, not even the s—t you created for yourself,' and it makes me upset."
In response to Banks' interview, Azalea basically brushed it off and in a series of tweets told Banks that not everything is about race. So says the white chick who had a runaway-slave reference in a song.
Over the weekend, many black artists came to Banks' defense. But Q-Tip was the most vocal about attempting to clarify and explain to Azalea the real essence of hip-hop.
But of course, all of this may fall on deaf ears, because Azalea's "handler" and person who discovered her happens to be a black man who guys by the name of T.I. and who always seem to throw on his Superman cape whenever the scary black people attack his precious snowflake (#sarcasm).
I guess you can't knock T.I.'s hustle when it comes to his prodigy. It sort of reminds me of a pimp and his prostitute. T.I. isn't going to knock anything, even if it's the appropriation of culture, as long as he's making money from it. But like everything in hip-hop, things evolve and fads fade. Hopefully the same will happen with Azalea.