Free Republic
Browse · Search
Bloggers & Personal
Topics · Post Article

Skip to comments.

An Open Letter To Iggy Azalea: You’re A Racist And A Phony
Thought Catalog ^ | September 5, 2014 | Anne Gus

Posted on 09/09/2014 11:07:36 AM PDT by walford

Dear Iggy Azalea:

I am Anne Gus—journalist, social-justice activist, and reigning Queen of Thought Catalog.

I know you’re finding it hard to believe that someone like me would bother writing to someone like you, and I know that you might be a teeny bit starstruck right now, but you’ve, like, been on my radar for a while now and I can’t remain silent about you any longer…I can’t let your atrocities go, like, unchallenged anymore…so congrats, I guess you can consider yourself officially famous now that I’m talking to you…or whatever.

Iggy, in many ways we’re very similar people. We’re both humans, we’re both female, we’re both in our 20s (on the right side of 25), we’ve both had rocket-like breakthroughs this year, and we both have billions of fans worldwide.

But this letter to you is not going to address our likenesses, but our differences.

This summer, you—a female rap artist who seemed to come from nowhere—went full-on jihad and literally blew up all over the charts with your catchy hip-hop single “Fancy.”

When I first heard the song, and about you, a mysterious up-and-coming female rapper with a funny name, I naturally got super-duper excited. I found your music on Spotify and was hooked. I was sure I was the first in my group of friends to have discovered you, and I was soooo looking forward to bragging about that.

This was in early June and so I got my speakers out and spent the last weeks of school walking around and blasting your most popular song. I was strolling around campus like almost 24/7, singing along to the catchy “I’m so fancy” hook, playfully asking “Who dat, who dat?,” spelling your name like a retard, and shaking my bountiful booty to your beats.

I don’t know what about your music was so spellbinding to me, but I quickly became obsessed. You seemed to usher in the musical summer by drowning out the tired, hackneyed bars that sputtered from my friends’ Nicki Minaj spring playlists. You were fresh, new, and most importantly, I had discovered you first out of all my friends.

When listening to you, I felt so empowered, so tolerant, so cultural. There I was, rocking out, poppin’, lockin’, and twerkin’ to you, an underground female rapper of color and doing it light years before any other Women’s Studies students #hipsteralert #lol. It could hardly get more un-narrow-minded than that. Now no one could accuse me of being racist again, like, ever.

Unfortunately for me, I had missed one very important detail about you, Iggy—you aren’t black. Like, not black at all. Like, not even a little bit black. In fact, you were whiter than a Romney family gathering, and as if that wasn’t bad enough, you turned out to be furthest thing from black one can be, namely Australian (which is basically synonymous with being racist).

This obviously came as a shock to me. I saw these, your true colors (literally) one day in July. The rude awakening came one morning when I was chilling with my homies in a park here in central Boston. I eagerly queued “Fancy” on my portable speakers and was really excited to get to officially introduce all my friends to you, the new rap queen I had been raving about for weeks and who I had abandoned my previously totally fave artist and baddest bad bitch, Nicki Minaj, for.

But when the song came on, my friends started acting really weird and squirmy, shooting uneasy glances at each other like they wanted to tell me something—and they did—oh, boy, they did.

Holly was the one who eventually piped up and told me everything. Told me that you were and had only ever been a.big.fat.lie. A cultural appropriator, a thief of black culture and a backwoods Australian hick. She told me she’d, like, made the discovery when she’d stumbled upon an interview with you on YouTube and that she’d realized that you weren’t the colorful, fab, and fierce urban woman of color that she and I had assumed you were, but that you were in actuality a white Australian devil.

My high regard for you burst faster than a balloon dropped into a hedgehog orgy and I realized what a huge mistake I had made. I had been prancing around everywhere championing you—a white Australian racist—over Nicki Minaj, a proud Woman of Color, basically the whole summer. I had done it unwittingly, sure, but still, the damage to my tolerant reputation was already done.

At first, the horribleness of the truth made me protest what Holly was telling me. I mean, of course you were black—you had to be. I mean, you sing about your work like you’re proud of having a job, you’ve got the unmistakable ghetto hood twang down, and you’re famous for your huge ass. There had to be a mistake—but no, to my horror, Holly was right. I went on YouTube and your weird white-devil face was on every thumbnail.

It felt like my life was a lie. I had believed in you all summer. I had dissed Nicki Minaj in favor of you. I had even told my friends that I believed you would be the next Lil’ Kim. But it turned out you were a fraud and had always been. Your big booty was merely one of many gimmicks that you’d shamelessly appropriated from black culture.

I couldn’t believe it hadn’t occurred to me to look up a video of you before I announced to the world that you were my new favorite artist. I guess I was just so caught up with the fact that I had discovered a fresh pussy-haver who was laying down some brand-new beats and spitting some hot-hot fire that I had forgotten to do a background check.

And as if the fact that you turned out to be white wasn’t enough, Holly showed me some of your tweets and it became clear that you’re not even secretive about your racism. Apparently you’re openly racist toward Asians, a group of people that I have a history of supporting through thick and thin—but mostly thin, because most of them are thin, no lie.

You may not know me, but ask anyone who does and they’d be the first to tell you that I’m, like a really, like, tolerant girl and that I respect other cultures, like, a lot. Maybe that’s why I have such a hard time dealing with you Australians, because you people have the opposite philosophy, as evinced by the fact that you have a Grand Wizard abbot of the KKK as PM.

So from having been super-proud and excited to have found a new female artist and having been one of your biggest fans, I instantly became ashamed—deeply ashamed. I had been running around singing along to a white Australian rapper. I couldn’t believe it. I hadn’t been getting any tolerance Brownie points from my Women’s Studies friends at all; instead, everyone had been silently thinking that I had become some sort of White Powerpuff Girl.

So Iggy, what I’m getting at is that you have made a fool out of me. By not being clear about not being black, you’ve made me look like a totally racist bitch in front of my entire college. You should be legally obligated to have a disclaimer in the beginning of all your songs where you make it clear that you’re not of the black and that you have no affiliation with the African American community, much less the African African community. That way, we tolerant, color-blind, and unracist people can turn you the fuck off and not accidentally support your hillbilly xenophobia.

I can’t help but think of how many other tolerant, progressive, anti-racist people you’ve tricked into liking your totally backwards and hateful music, some of whom may have realized it only now after having read my letter to you.

So yeah, basically, Iggy, don’t pretend to be something you’re not. You pretending to be black is super-racist and dishonest. You’re confusing millions of people by sounding black and you’re tricking patrons of the African American arts to support your music.

I can’t undo the damage you’ve done to my angelic reputation of tolerance, but I can prevent others from falling victim to the same misunderstanding.

Yours truly,

Anne Gus, former fan (when I thought you was black)


TOPICS: Music/Entertainment
KEYWORDS: annegus; blackracism; prejudice; race; satire; stupidity
Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-30 next last
Oh the shock when a fan finds out that the admired artist is in fact the White Devil -- and therefore by definition racist.

There are no quotes or actions by the artist substantiating this claim, but being white is enough.

1 posted on 09/09/2014 11:07:37 AM PDT by walford
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | View Replies]

To: walford

A big pile of who cares since rap is not music anyway.


2 posted on 09/09/2014 11:10:37 AM PDT by Resolute Conservative
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: walford

“..... your hillbilly xenophobia......”

AHAHAHAHAHA

give the author the Nobel Prize


3 posted on 09/09/2014 11:12:38 AM PDT by MeshugeMikey (Please RESIGN Mr. President Its the RIGHT thing to do_RETIRE THE REGIME!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: walford
Very humorous.

In fact, you were whiter than a Romney family gathering

More humor, if you know anything about the Romney family.

4 posted on 09/09/2014 11:14:01 AM PDT by marron
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Resolute Conservative

didnt the author also write ..The Diary Of An Skank??


5 posted on 09/09/2014 11:14:39 AM PDT by MeshugeMikey (Please RESIGN Mr. President Its the RIGHT thing to do_RETIRE THE REGIME!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: walford

Rap sucks in any color.


6 posted on 09/09/2014 11:16:01 AM PDT by pallis
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: walford

Whats funnier are the comments at her website.

This is pretty good satire. And her readers are too dim to figure it out.


7 posted on 09/09/2014 11:16:34 AM PDT by marron
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: walford
In fact, you were whiter than a Romney family gathering

Right there, proof that the writer is a moron.

8 posted on 09/09/2014 11:17:05 AM PDT by dfwgator
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: walford

I think this was meant as satire. If you look at her other postings on the site, they have quotes like “While I am like a super arid viewer of all that is cinema, being a huge fan of cinematic masterpieces such as Mary Kate and Ashley: Passport to Paris, Miley Cyrus’s LOL, and Pootie Tang, I also recognize the dark darkness that lies doormat between the frames of the Film Industry.”

It wouldn’t surprise me if this was written by a guy making fun of feminism.


9 posted on 09/09/2014 11:17:08 AM PDT by Our man in washington
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: walford
Apparently you’re openly racist toward Asians, a group of people that I have a history of supporting through thick and thin—but mostly thin, because most of them are thin, no lie.

Irony is lost on our special snowflake, isn't it?

10 posted on 09/09/2014 11:17:37 AM PDT by denydenydeny ("World History is not full of good governments, or of good voters either "--P.J. O'Rourke)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: All

I just found out that the writer is herself a white female. So this is a wigger/wannabe criticizing another white person for being admired as a black artist and finding out she was wrong.


11 posted on 09/09/2014 11:18:18 AM PDT by walford (https://www.facebook.com/wralford [feel free to friend me] @wralford on Twitter)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: walford

1. Rap is not music.
2. If blacks don’t like Iggy because she is white they are the racists.
3. The author is an idiot if she went an entire summer not knowing Iggy was white.
4. I’ve seen Iggy’s picture and she is not all that!


12 posted on 09/09/2014 11:18:24 AM PDT by rfreedom4u (Your feelings don't trump my free speech!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: walford

I cannot tell if this is truly great satire or a well-written exposition of her true POV.

Does anybody know for sure?


13 posted on 09/09/2014 11:18:41 AM PDT by Sherman Logan (Perception wins most of the battles. Reality wins ALL the wars.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Sherman Logan

I’d say her tongue is firmly in cheek all the way through.


14 posted on 09/09/2014 11:19:48 AM PDT by marron
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 13 | View Replies]

To: walford

Click on her name, and you get her other articles. I haven’t read any of them, but the titles are a hoot.

http://thoughtcatalog.com/anne-gus/


15 posted on 09/09/2014 11:22:56 AM PDT by marron
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: walford

What is an ‘Iggy’ azaelea? I have some deciduous azaeleas in the yard but no ‘Iggy’ azaeleas.


16 posted on 09/09/2014 11:24:37 AM PDT by MeganC (It took Democrats four hours to deport Elian Gonzalez)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: Resolute Conservative

and most recording artists can’t sing well today. All they need to do is have a cool package, good body and decent voice and electronics and media hype does the rest.


17 posted on 09/09/2014 11:26:14 AM PDT by Bitsy
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 2 | View Replies]

To: walford

Yep; that’s the same kind of outrage as happened when whites found out that country singer Charley Pride was black, or when Nat King Cole sang like a white guy. Oh, wait...


18 posted on 09/09/2014 11:29:54 AM PDT by JimRed (Excise the cancer before it kills us; feed & water the Tree of Liberty! TERM LIMITS NOW & FOREVER!)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: walford

Satire. Dumb satire, but satire.


19 posted on 09/09/2014 11:30:43 AM PDT by JimSEA
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 1 | View Replies]

To: marron

Yup. Looked at a couple of her other pieces. She’s a darn good satirist. The key to which is being “almost” believable.

Here’s a funny one.

http://thoughtcatalog.com/anne-gus/2014/07/i-was-catcalled-by-an-actual-cat-and-it-was-terrifying/

Not exactly safe for work.


20 posted on 09/09/2014 11:32:36 AM PDT by Sherman Logan (Perception wins most of the battles. Reality wins ALL the wars.)
[ Post Reply | Private Reply | To 14 | View Replies]


Navigation: use the links below to view more comments.
first 1-2021-30 next last

Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.

Free Republic
Browse · Search
Bloggers & Personal
Topics · Post Article

FreeRepublic, LLC, PO BOX 9771, FRESNO, CA 93794
FreeRepublic.com is powered by software copyright 2000-2008 John Robinson