Iggy Azalea is back, reclaiming her time after her longstanding musical hiatus. Now, on the heels of the release of her sophomore full-length studio album, “In My Defense,” the Aussie superstar is opening about her time away.
In the September issue of the Cosmopolitan, Azalea shared the highs and lows of her hiatus, which included time away at a mental health retreat in 2016. “I just couldn’t get out of functioning at this insanity level,” Azalea said, as she addressed her inability to “separate well-intended criticisms from trolling.”
But now, in the wake of her treatment, Azalea is in a better headspace, ready to hit the ground running. ”You get as many shots as you are able to persevere for in life, no matter what you do,” she said. “You get as many chances as you’re willing to sit there and fucking really fight for tooth and nail. And I’m not going to stop fighting for a second chance until somebody f–king gives me one and then I’m not going to f–k it up.”
Despite the rapper’s new enlightenment though, there isn’t much she’s willing to change about who she is as a person or an artist for that matter. In fact, in the interview, Azalea addressed criticisms about her music and the complaints about her history of cultural appropriation. Although she acknowledged it, she was unapologetic about her antics, as she believes cultural appropriation is subjective.
“You could ask one person of the same race, ‘Does this affect you? And they will say yes,’” she said. “But another person will say no. They could be from the same place, same everything, but have different perspectives about it.”
“I’m still going to make the same type of music and still be ridiculous and larger than life. So, I can’t be that fu*king sorry about it,” she said, acknowledging the fact that it would be asinine to apologize for continued behavior – especially because the same reason people hate her is also the reason a lot of people love her.
“I would hit back and say, ‘What about this that I had to go through?’ because I wanted to talk so much about my experiences of things I didn’t have, and I think it felt like I wasn’t acknowledging that there is white privilege and there is institutionalized racism,” she said, as she explained the reasoning behind her new outlook on the topic. “It seemed to a lot of people like I was living in this bubble or unaware of all these things that people have to experience.”
So now, as a result, Azalea understands the criticisms and where it stems from, but, according to the Cosmopolitan, she doesn’t really care.
