Iggy Azalea

Iggy Azalea (2015)

Iggy Azalea (born June 7, 1990 in Sydney , New South Wales ; real name Amethyst Amelia Kelly ) is an Australian rapper and songwriter. Her most successful pieces of music include Fancy and Black Widow .

Life

Iggy Azalea was born as Amethyst Amelia Kelly in Sydney , New South Wales , to a comic book artist and a cleaner . According to her own statement, she is partly of Aboriginal descent, her last name Kelly comes from Ireland . Her family moved to Mullumbimby , New South Wales when she was a child. There she began to make music at the age of 14 and had her first band . Just before her 16th birthday, Azalea dropped out of high school and moved to the United States , telling her parents that she just wanted to go on vacation there. After arriving in Miami , she informed her parents that she would be staying in the United States from now on. Upon arrival, she passed the General Educational Development Test .

Her stage name consists of the name of her former dog, Iggy, and Azalea Street , where she grew up. Azalea has also been working as a model for Levi's jeans since the end of 2012 .

Musical career

Career start

After moving to Houston and Atlanta , Azalea moved to Los Angeles on the advice of an employee of a record company to pursue her rap career. From 2011 she started uploading some videos of her freestyle on her YouTube channel. On September 27, 2011 she released her first mixtape Ignorant Art , which includes a guest post by YG . The song Pu $$ y , which was previously shown on Azalea's YouTube account and is also included on the mixtape, received some media attention, also through the music video. In November 2011, Azalea released a music video for her song My World , in which actor and former wrestler Thomas Lister Jr. made a cameo . Azalea announced that she would like to release her first studio album as soon as she is signed to a major label . For this she won the American rapper TI as a producer. A collaboration with the label Interscope Records failed because they agreed to work with TI, so she was signed to TI's own independent label Grand Hustle Records . On March 26, 2012, Azalea released the song Murda Bizness , which contains a verse by TI, on her YouTube channel. The original plan was to release this song as the lead single for their first studio album, The New Classic , but then appeared on their Extended Play Glory , which they released on July 30, 2012. The second song, Millionaire Misfits , was released on June 24, 2012 and, like Murda Bizness , could not place in the charts. On October 11, 2012, Azalea's second mixtape TrapGold was released. In 2012 she performed with Steve Aoki in front of 80,000 spectators in Las Vegas . In the same year, an American rap magazine named her the most promising newcomer of the year.

2013–2014: The New Classic and Reclassified

Iggy Azalea (2014)

In January and February 2013 Iggy Azalea was a support act for Rita Ora's Radioactive Tour and presented her single Work , which also became the lead single of her debut album. She also accompanied the rapper Nas on his European tour. On February 13, 2013, she announced that she had signed with the Mercury Records label . Work reached number 17 in the UK singles chart and number 54 on the US Billboard Hot 100 , making it Azalea's first commercial success. The single has since been awarded a platinum record in the United States and a silver record in the United Kingdom . On April 26, 2013, their second single, Bounce , was released in Europe . This also reached the top 20 in the UK, but was not released as a single in North America. This was followed by a collaboration with TI for the song Change Your Life , in which the rapper contributed a verse. This single was Azalea's most successful release in Great Britain at number 10. In the United States, the single could not place. In October 2013, Azalea performed as a support act for Beyoncé's The Mrs. Carter Show World Tour at the concerts in Australia. Although the work on their first studio album The New Classic was already completed in October 2013, the record company decided to release it later in March 2014. On November 10, 2013, Azalea performed the song Blurred Lines with Robin Thicke at the MTV Europe Music Awards 2013 on.

On February 17th, Azalea released the song Fancy , a collaboration with British singer and songwriter Charli XCX . Fancy had existed for a few weeks as a leak on the Internet under the name Leave It . The song became Azalea's most successful release to date, reaching # 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 and # 1 in New Zealand, and the top 5 in Australia and the UK. Fancy has sold more than 4,000,000 copies in the United States alone. The song was also nominated in the categories Record of the Year and Best Pop Duo or Group Performance at the 2015 Grammy Awards . Their debut album The New Classic was finally released on April 21, 2014. A week later, on April 28, 2014, the single Problem , a song by Ariana Grande in collaboration with Iggy Azalea, was released. This single was just as successful as Fancy and was Azalea's first number one hit in the UK . In the United States, Problem reached number two and was only beaten by Azalea's own single, Fancy . This makes her the third artist after Mariah Carey and Ashanti to be placed at number 1 and 2 on the Billboard Hot 100 at the same time, as well as the fifth female rapper to reach number 1 in these charts. On July 8, 2014 the single Black Widow was released, which was originally written by Katy Perry , but was not recorded due to lack of time, so Azalea recorded it with Rita Ora . This song also reached the top 5 in the United Kingdom and the United States and received two-time platinum in the United States.

On November 21, 2014 Reclassified appeared as a re-release of The New Classic . The album contains five new songs in addition to seven songs already on the first version. Beg for It was the first single to be released on October 24, 2014. The follow-up single Trouble , on which Jennifer Hudson played, reached the top 10 in the UK.

2015 – today: Survive the Summer and In My Defense

On December 10, 2014, Azalea announced that she would go on tour in 2015. The name of the tour is The Great Escape Tour and according to her it should refer to her upcoming studio album, which she is also promoting on this tour. After the tour was postponed in March 2015, Azalea's management announced in May 2015 that the tour had been completely canceled and that a new tour was planned for 2016 to complete their second studio album.

In January 2015, Azalea announced that she was working on her second studio album. On May 4, 2015, the single Pretty Girls , a duet with Britney Spears , was released, which fell short of expectations commercially. Azalea blamed the lack of advertising and television appearances, which led to resentment with her duet partner Britney Spears. In October 2015, Azalea announced that their new studio album would be titled Digital Distortion . The release of the lead single was originally planned for October 2015. At the beginning of March 2016, Azalea announced the lead single Team on Twitter for March 18, 2016. The release of the album has been postponed to 2018. On March 24, 2017, Azalea released the second single Mo Bounce . Then Switch appeared , a song they shared with the Brazilian singer Anitta . In early December 2017, however, Azalea changed the title of the album to Survive the Summer and announced the release of the first single Savior with rapper Quavo .

On July 6, 2018, the two tracks Kream (in collaboration with rapper Tyga ) and Tokyo Snow Trip for Azalea's EP Survive the Summer were available for download.

Azalea's second studio album In My Defense was released on July 19, 2019 and could no longer build on the commercial success of their debut album. As a single release were Sally Walker , Started and F * ck it Up featuring rapper Kash Doll published. Only in the United Kingdom do the songs find themselves reasonably successful in the charts.

Discography

→ Main article : Iggy Azalea / Discography

Studio albums

year	title	Top ranking, total weeks, awardChart placementsChart placements (Year, title, rankings, weeks, awards, notes)							Remarks
		DE	AT	CH	UK	US	AU	NZ
2014	The New Classic	DE83 (1 week) DE	-	-	UK5 silver (22 weeks)UK	US3 platinum (43 weeks)US	AU2 gold (22 weeks)AU	NZ3 (13 weeks) NZ	First published: April 21, 2014 Sales: + 1,135,000
	Reclassified	-	-	-	UK38 silver (5 weeks)UK	US16 (27 weeks) US	AU32 (1 week) AU	-	Initial release: November 24th, 2014 The New Classic re-release. Sales: + 70,000
2019	In My Defense	-	-	-	-	US50 (1 week) US	-	-	First published: July 19, 2019

Filmography

year	title	role	note
2015	Fast & Furious 7	female racing driver	Cameo

Controversy

Azalea canceled her appearance at the 2015 Pittsburgh Pride event because she was criticized for a series of comments on the online service Twitter with racist and homophobic content in 2011 after her planned appearance was announced. She originally explained to the comments, which have since been deleted, that they were not intended for the public, but now apologized for the comments that she described as rash. She explained her cancellation by saying that her appearance would now distract from the real concerns of the event.

Trivia

Some Azalea music videos pay homage to famous films, including the music video for Fancy (homage to Clueless - What Else! ), The music video for Work (homage to Priscilla - Queen of the Desert ) and the music video for Black Widow (homage to Kill Bill - Volume 1 ).

Web links

Commons : Iggy Azalea  - Collection of Images

• Official website
• Iggy Azalea at Allmusic (English)
• Iggy Azalea at Discogs (English)

Individual evidence

1. ↑ Katja Engelhardt: From stripper to rapper. In: Puls.de =. May 29, 2013, archived from the original on August 28, 2016 . 
2. ↑ Iggy Azalea EthniCelebs. Retrieved November 26, 2014 . 
3. ↑ Iggy Goes Pop. In: Dazed. Retrieved November 26, 2014 . 
4. ↑ laut.de-Biography Iggy Azalea. In: Laut.de . Retrieved November 26, 2014 . 
5. ↑ Iggy Azalea Biography. (No longer available online.) Archived from the original on April 2, 2013 ; accessed on November 26, 2014 (English). 
6. ↑ Idolator And Levi's Present Iggy Azalea: Go Forth. In: Idolator. September 13, 2012, accessed November 26, 2014 . 
7. ↑ Iggy Azalea at Viva
8. ↑ Rebecca Haithcoat: Meet Iggy Azalea, the Street Smart Blonde Bombshell Behind "Pu $$ y". (No longer available online.) In: LA Weekly. October 28, 2011, archived from the original on October 22, 2014 ; accessed on November 26, 2014 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
9. ^ TI Signs Iggy Azalea, Chipmunk, and Trae Tha Truth to Grand Hustle. In: Rap-Up. Retrieved November 26, 2014 . 
10. ^ One to watch: Iggy Azalea . In The Observer online from March 24, 2013
11. ↑ Marion Desmaret: Iggy Azalea - The new trash queen of Hip Hop ( Memento of the original from June 16, 2013 in the Internet Archive ) Info: The archive link was automatically inserted and not yet checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice. . In: Arte .tv from September 17, 2012; Retrieved July 4, 2013 
12. ↑ Iggy Azalea reveals signing to Def Jam's UK distributor, Mercury Records, in new song. (No longer available online.) February 13, 2013, archived from the original on April 25, 2013 ; accessed on November 27, 2014 (English). Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
13. ↑ Australia's most successful rapper Iggy Azalea wants to become Beyonce's BFF. October 17, 2013, accessed November 27, 2014 . 
14. ^ RIAA Gold / Platinum Searchable Database. Recording Industry Association of America , accessed November 27, 2014 . 
15. ↑ Gary Trust: Iggy Azalea Tops Hot 100 With 'Fancy,' Matches Beatles' Historic Mark. In: Billboard . May 28, 2014, accessed November 27, 2014 . 
16. ↑ Steffi Meyer: Iggy Azalea likes Rita Ora. (No longer available online.) In: Ampya . May 3, 2014, archived from the original on September 4, 2014 ; Retrieved October 20, 2014 . Info: The archive link was inserted automatically and has not yet been checked. Please check the original and archive link according to the instructions and then remove this notice.  
17. ↑ Prechecking: Iggy Azalea, Sido, David Guetta. In: Laut.de . November 18, 2014, accessed November 21, 2014 . 
18. ↑ Iggy Azalea's Planning Her 'Great Escape': Here's What She's Talking About. MTV , December 10, 2014, accessed on September 29, 2015 . 
19. ↑ Erika Ramirez: Exclusive: Iggy Azalea's The Great Escape Tour Rescheduled. In: Billboard . March 10, 2015, accessed September 29, 2015 . 
20. ^ Paul Thompson: Iggy Azalea Cancels Her Tour. In: XXLMag. May 29, 2015, accessed September 29, 2015 . 
21. ↑ Elias Leight: Billboard Winterfest: Iggy Azalea Talks Grammy Awards, Her 2015 Tour, and Her Next Album. In: Billboard. January 26, 2015, accessed September 29, 2015 . 
22. ↑ Dispute about "Pretty Girls" flop escalates. ProSieben , June 30, 2015, accessed on September 29, 2015 . 
23. ^ Adam Fleischer: Iggy Azalea Teased Tons Of Info About Her New Music. MTV , October 7, 2015, accessed October 8, 2015 . 
24. ↑ Iggy Azalea on Twitter. Azalea via Twitter , March 5, 2016, accessed March 14, 2016 . 
25. ↑ Chart sources: DE AT CH UK US AU NZ
26. ↑ Iggy Azalea pulls out of LGBT festival following protests in: The Guardian, June 10, 2015, accessed June 10, 2015
27. ↑ Iggy Azalea's New Video Copies 'Clueless'. Elle.com, March 4, 2014, accessed November 9, 2014 . 
28. ↑ Nadeska Alexis: Iggy Azalea's 'Work' Video Inspired By Outkast. In: MTV . March 14, 2013, accessed December 9, 2014 . 
29. ↑ Iggy Azalea And Rita Ora Channel 'Kill Bill' In 'Black Widow' Video: Watch Now. In: MTV . Retrieved December 9, 2014 .