Before Iggy Azalea There Was Teena Marie. What Is Black Music Anyway?

She might need a little Proactiv,
but who doesn't
 love a fresh faced girl?

These days its easy to turn on the radio and get confused about the voices you hear on the airwaves.  Sam Smith, Ed Sheeran, Justin Timberlake, Robin Thicke.  Any one of these artist has the ability to make you think you are listening to black people music.  Yeah, I know.  Music has no color, so the whole conversation should be moot.  But it isn't.

For some reason, Iggy Azalea has to apologize for sounding like she's straight outa Compton when in fact she is a born and raised Australian with a significant accent.  Now, this brother will admit that I was shocked to hear her voice for the first time in interviews, but not to the extent that it was some extreme novelty.  I'm talkin' SquareBiz to yo' ass because Teena Marie told me to.  The Vanilla Child was more black to us than Sammy Davis Jr., and today she is as iconic in the black community as she is across the world.

The original pic that started this mess

Speaking of the world, I am a little disgusted with how late we Americans are when it comes to good music anyway.  Obviously "Good" is a very subjective thing, but the wave of studio DJ's like David Guetta or Calvin Harris who collaborate with pop stars is totally European.  Despite our decade long resistance towards electronic/house music (not you Chicago), its roots and branches have an evolution similar to rap music. House party music is America's creation yet we are late to the electronic dance party trying so hard to force feed American hip-hop upon every artist that allows 16 bars on their song.

Both house music and rap music are birthed out of R&B, aka.,black culture and Iggy had better recognize.  That's not exactly my position on the matter, but Azealia Banks, the British rap phenom who went in on Iggy long before Snoop compared her to a black albino brother just for taking a photo without her makeup seems to have similar feelings towards raps new princess.


In the grand scheme of things, Iggy needs to accept this bold departure from her original introduction to the world as par for the course.  When she gets big enough to have a VH1 roast like Snoop double G had once he blew all the way up, she better expect that makeup free photos will add some heat to that occasion. At the end of her career she can look back and ask herself if she would have rather been the roasted rap princess or another forgotten rap artist.

Snoop tries to clean up the mess from his Iggy rant.

That being said, Iggy is the recipient of more than a simple roasting; she is an unfortunate victim of that nigga shit. This black man can't quite understand blacks who demand respect but get upset with the greatest form of flattery.  Who cares if the Beastie Boys were making fun of black people and not actually rapping about anything in particular.  The Beastie's have a place in the pantheon of rap music.  They (and a Run DMC/ Aerosmith collab') allowed for rap to go mainstream.

Is Nicki Minaj way harder on the mic than Iggy?  She is to me, but some people are a little too afraid of black women owning their sexuality in such a way.  If Iggy makes Nicki more palatable to the racist and the chauvinist who don't realize that women have taken over the rap game, then she furthers a bigger cause.  Azealia Banks seemed to have a problem with Iggy copying the sexually explicit female rap thing that launched her unto the scene, but this is a formula that many female rappers will do in order to shock their way into an almost exclusively male world that insists upon a substantive diversion..

AZEALIA BANKS - 212 (explicit lyrics)

Rap has represented the voice of black culture for so long, we think we own it in some bizarre way; as if poetry should belong to England because Shakespeare was so dope. Black men with bedroom studios fight every day to make rap music remain the voice of the city people.  Male rappers have relinquished some control to black women who have carved a larger stake for themselves within all of black culture, but a white chick rappin'?...and ballin' at it?

That 's a bitter pill  to swallow and a painful one when its shoved down your throat like the ladies, including Iggy, continue to do in the hip-hop world.  I wish Iggy would have treated Snoop's stupidity like a roasting, but she's kinda new to this nigga shit (she's still perfecting her ebonics).  Every hip-hop artist, even Macklemore, serves the greater good of keeping the art form relevant.  Instead of honoring her for her role in the struggle, the haters do what they do.  Iggy may be able to sound blackish when she raps (is there any other way to rap?) but she will never quite understand the self-destructive compulsion that is called nigga shit.  That comes from a place beyond the understanding of most who suffer from this ailment.

Since they say you never have haters if your not doing anything, Iggy should be proud of her progression.  She's moved from Azealia Banks, who very few have heard of, to the original Snoop Double G.  Next up?  The White House....while you still can get an invite.