Iggy Azalea has responded to Macklemore‘s call-out in his new song “White Privilege II,” and has earned a firestorm of criticism in the process – particularly from gifted sociopolitical rapper Talib Kweli.
The song is a nine-minute long dead-horse beating on race, with PanderMackle taking time out to namecheck white artists who he has been referenced alongside as adopting black culture for success and financial gain. He mentions Elvis Presley and Miley Cyrus, as well as Iggy. Listen.
The lyrics include: “You’ve exploited and stolen the music, the moment, The magic, the passion, the fashion, you toy with, The culture was never yours to make better, You’re Miley, you’re Elvis, you’re Iggy Azalea. Fake and so plastic, you’ve heisted the magic, You’ve taken the drums and the accent you rapped in, You’re branded hip-hop, it’s so fascist and backwards.”
When asked about the song on Twitter, Azalea responded without addressing the lyrical matter of appropriating black culture, which she has most certainly done:
After her response, rapper Talib Kweli stepped into the conversation in a series of damning tweets posted Friday.
“I actually rooted for Iggy when she first came out,” he wrote. “But she’s disrespected hip hop culture one too many times.”
Addressing her directly, Kweli laid out Iggy’s perceived fairweather activism attitude for black culture, which she has undoubtedly co-opted for chart-topping gains through a cartoonishly thug-chick public persona.
“If you value black lives, shit I can’t tell,” Talib deadpans. “I can tell you love black culture tho. I think u confuse the first w the latter.”
Now that we’ve come this far, let’s go ahead and confuse the shit out of everybody. Check out Talib Kweli’s cover of the other Iggy – Iggy Pop and The Stooges, that is. The song is “Search & Destroy”:
