The Great White Blight: Holding the Line with Azelia and Nicki
They haven’t found a good replacement for black girls but they keep trying to make us go quiet.
There is a black girl thing that hasn’t quite been captured yet. They’ve been working on it for centuries now, from the first call , to the ring shout, to the Mississippi Delta growl, to the sugar cane song .
Iggy Azalea and Azaelia Banks have been the ship that has launched a thousand post liberal hip hop pieces. Nicki Minaj and Iggy Azalea was the ship that launched a thousand tepid feminist pieces.
This is not a hip hop problem , this a blues problem that very pointedly never gets named and comes and goes with every single apex and nadir of black music,or black female creativity.
Black women speaking about the reality of their lives is uncomfortable, we swing it, growl it and yes enjoy it , but at the crux speaking black woman’s experience diasporically and an American one specifically is voicing the politics,erotics and aesthetics of the constant knowledge of your own disvalue.Â
Banks assertion that this is the thing we made is most heartbreaking for it’s truth than it’s theoretical application to cultural appropriation. Hip-hop like blues and jazz is a thing we made , and more importantly it was a thing black women have used to force artistic playgrounds that later seem to be freeing for everyone but them. Banks more outrĂ© experiments, are screaming call backs to Missy Elliott. Elliott who bursted to centerstage after years of production work , on an Ann Peeples sample who was straight from the same St.Louis that gave us Bessie Smith. Nicki calls to Kim who called to Betty Davis, who called to that same Smith and Ma Rainey. While being their own distinct and innovative thing black women in hip hop have always reminded the world of the existence and innovation of black women and their lives, GROUNDED in their sociopolitical oppression .Â
 “We hate Iggy”is the “easy “ problem of race and hip hop rather than the more difficult problem of a cultural landscape struggling with needing back women around to provide cultural product, while needing us to be seen as not producing anything to justify our abuse. Black girls are on constant defense, and are considered to have no selves to defend , Azaelia is defending hip hop , not black girls, Nicki is making “superb racial commentary” not straight up staking her claim as a lyrical master. When did defending black women not become enough?
When Azaelia Banks cries during an interview about whats happening, the idea that a pretty blonder Iggy is somehow taking it from her is safe. When Nicki says “When you hear something from me I wrote… No shade” it’s easier to write about her “slamming Iggy” or the geo politics of over inflated women’s fights than the reality. Azaelia is talking about her own paid, Nicki is talking about her own prowess, but those declarations are instinctively seen as fights, because Black women’s centrality is seen as aggressive, or “jealous”. We can’t be just mad , we have to be mad AT, and Iggy seems t o be committed to making her self a great target by being insensitive and questionably talented.
Even more so that it exploded on Twitter, a domain once maligned for, now just mined for black women’s culture responses is even richer . T.I’s tone deaf defense of Iggy was made more comical by the fact it was done in a medium that is making much of it’s relevant hay on the consistent hard knocks black women face on it every day. Rather than answer what’s so special about Iggy that she cant get ( the mildest form of ) this work , T.I defaults to insulting Azaelia and black people (some !) for claiming cultural “stinginess”. We are expected to give and fade quietly while enterprising ( men) like him reap the benefits. His Ain’t No Mediocre a video that sees him jet off to Brazil, to center Iggy as a goddess galumphing her way through favelas, takes it worldwide , his idea of successful going global is a white Australian rapping like “Gangsta Boo”.
The easy accusations of drag and minstrelsy are superb indicators that the conversation isn’t being had with black women. This isn’t generalize blackness being mocked, this is black womanhood. When cornrows and big booties are lauded for white women, but a woman can throw a wig on a penis call it a black woman and still be called a feminist icon, appropriation is the nice way for saying , we are watching a concerted effort to make Black women jokes and also to keep them from being able to discuss it. When Nicki cites Kanye, it is both astute observation and public personal caution. Speaking out gets you got, and what happens when it’s in medium that is cruel to you anyway.
The problem isn’t that we talk too much about Iggy. The problem is that we don’t talk about black women as a respected legacy of skill talent and creative force of which hip-hop was the latest itineration.Black people getting moved out of hip hop is terrible but is preceded by black WOMEN being moved out of hip hop first. Not just as subjects ,but as artists and commentators. Talking about Iggy is fine , if we actually HAVE THE TALK. Words about appropriation aren’t enough , when very specific aspects of black woman hood are under attack. Iggy’s white privilege is a GREAT thing to talk about if we actually bring the people it’s constructed on for its potency.
~ Sydette
