Aussie rapper Iggy Azalea has rocketed from aspiring child prodigy to top-of-the-charts star. Lynn Yaeger talks with her about owning her success—and her shape.
Sometimes, when Iggy Azalea wakes up in the morning, she resolves that starting today, she is going to be fashionable! She will never wear sweatpants again! But then, as soon as she starts doing her makeup, “the dressing gown slips back into existence,” she says, “and I feed a dog.”
Azalea is confessing this ambivalence about the rigors of dressing up over a tuna melt and French fries at Toast in Los Angeles. We are seated at an outdoor table—which Azalea requested, having rejected a quiet interior perch. It’s unclear whether the fact that this makes us paparazzi bait is something she is more than OK with, or if she just likes the sunshine—but in any case, the photographers are massed across the street, along with a parade of weeping little girls brandishing schoolbooks and begging for autographs, lending a Day of the Locust vibe to what’s already become a surprisingly candid lunch.
Azalea (real name—and such a pretty name!—Amethyst Amelia Kelly) is clad in a huge Proenza Schouler sweater; hand-me-down jeans from her live-in partner, Lakers forward-guard Nick Young; and a black Borsalino-esque hat. She arrived in the States eight years ago from Mullumbimby, New South Wales, Australia, where she distinguished herself early on by trolling around town at age ten in a Chinese robe and lime-green platform shoes. Growing up, she was infatuated with Missy Elliott and Tupac Shakur, and even had a rap trio with two other girls. “I was very obsessed with being a child prodigy,” she remembers. “I liked the idea of doing something seemingly impossible in a field without women.”
Now 24, Azalea is, in fact, one of a very few wildly successful white female rappers, with her song “Fancy” reaching the top of the Billboard Hot 100 chart last spring; that same week, her collaboration with Ariana Grande on the single “Problem” went to number two, which meant that Azalea joined the Beatles as the only artists to hold the top two slots simultaneously with their first two hits. She began work on her second studio album in January, and later this year she’ll head out on a 21-city North American tour, which she’ll then take around the world. Azalea announced her tour, of course, via Twitter—where, even more than most young celebrities of the moment, she’s established a constant (and often extremely frank) dialogue with her fans and followers.
Jennifer Hudson—who was featured on Azalea’s song “Trouble,” for which Azalea also wrote a treatment and directed a video—credits Azalea with inspiring her creativity. “Iggy is the definition of an artist,” Hudson says. “She’s unique and different—and is consistently coming to the table with a fresh perspective.”
Azalea also has a lovely visage and a willowy physique—at least from the front. But let’s face it: She is also famous for an impressive backside, an attribute that has been garnering outsize attention of late. (The mysterious fascination with this body part extends to Kim Kardashian West’s much-discussed caboose and Meghan Trainor’s mega-hit “All About That Bass.”) Azalea, who has collaborated with her idol Jennifer Lopez on a raunchy ditty titled “Booty,” uncharacteristically downplays the obsession, noting that, really, “it’s about proportion. I have to have everything tailored because I have such a small waist. I’m a 2 or a 0 on the top, and a 6 on the bottom.”
Azalea’s shape wasn’t always universally lauded. “When I first got to the States, people told me I should think about modeling,” she says. “So I went to a few agencies, but once they measured my body”—she stands five feet ten inches—“they didn’t like me anymore.” Being told she should lose some weight and get a nose job had the predictable effect on her confidence: “I was looking in the mirror a little differently.”
