Despite the growing number of people throwing shade toward Iggy Azalea, the Australian-born rapper says she’s never been told she’s inauthentic.
“I have never had any musicians tell me that I wasn’t authentic for being white and Australian,” Azalea, 24, said in an interview with The Guardian posted Saturday.
“No one. Even I had a warped perception of how I would be received in this business. What I’ve come to realize is that it’s the people who write about music—or who are outside it in some way—who have a problem with what I am doing. The only true insiders are the musicians themselves.”
On Sunday, Nicki Minaj slighted Azalea during her Best Female Hip-Hop Artist award acceptance speech at the 2014 BET Awards.
Minaj implied that Azalea used ghostwriters for her music, a rumor that’s long plagued the “Fancy” rapper. “What I want the world to know about Nicki Minaj is when you hear Nicki Minaj spit, Nicki Minaj wrote it,” Minaj said.
Last month, after Forbes claimed Azalea was running hip hop, Minaj told “The Breakfast Club” (via AllHipHop) that was far from the case.
“Ok, I’m reloaded,” she said. “Listen, all Forbes needs to worry about is my finances and when I’m going to be selling Myx Fusion for $250 million. That’s all they need to worry about. We rely on hip hop journalism and blogs for THAT kind of information. So we appreciate that, but no thank you.”