Iggy Azalea Wishes 2015 Never Happened, Explains Roots of Rapping Accent

As Iggy Azalea looks to the future — a new album and a wedding are both small steps away — she's very happily giving up the past.

The rapper, who was on the receiving end of some heavy criticism from Macklemore, Erykah Badu and Azealia Banks across the past year, said in an interview published to Elle Canada yesterday (February 29) that she still feels really misunderstood in hip hop, and would erase the past few months given the chance.

"If I could, I would Men in Black memory-erase 2015, I totally would — that would be amazing!" she said, before explaining that her response to Banks' infamous criticism in 2014 may have given people the wrong idea, and started a trend of calling her out.

"...When I dismissed [Banks], people started to think that I dismissed the whole movement, but I wasn’t trying to dismiss Black Lives Matter — I was trying to dismiss her because it’s our personal s---," she said. "I don’t think the subject matter of her tweet was invalid; I just think it was emotionally charged and driven by something else, and the whole thing got so misconstrued. I just wish I had acknowledged the issue head-on because it made people think I don’t care about what’s going on socially and what’s happening in America, and I do care."

And as for Iggy's American accent? She said she developed it years ago as a strategy to blend into the hip hop scene. Affecting the voice, she said, was something she thought was crucial to any chance of commercial success.

"A lot of people say ‘Imagine if someone rapped with a fake Australian accent.’ Well, okay, but you don’t turn on the TV and hear American people with fake Australian accents, so I don’t think it’s a fair comparison," she said. "I grew up watching Nicole Kidman speaking with an American accent in every movie. Even Keith Urban sings with an American country accent. And that’s just what you have to do to make it in this industry and be accepted."

Now, after the success of "Fancy" and "Problem," Iggy's said she's ready to tackle her sophomore LP, which speaks to the chaos of living in an era that's steeped in social media.

"[Digital Distortion] has a bit of an electronic, digital influence, so the name fits sonically," she explained. "But then, of course, topically, we all know the different things that were said about me in 2015 — some of them were fair and some of them, I think, were unfair. I just think it’s interesting that we live in this age of digital distortion where we’re all distorting each other and distorting ourselves and our perception of who we all are, and none of it is really accurate anymore."

Read the full interview here, and tell us what you think of Iggy's words.

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