As you would know by now, Aussie-born LA-based rapper Iggy Azalea is the cover model of our DIY issue which hits shelves this week (or you can buy it here). Love her or hate her, you gotta give it to the girl, she achieved the seemingly impossible: breaking the US rap market as a white, female from country New South Wales! Iggy sure knows a thing or two about DIY and getting shit done beyond the obstacles so we thought she was a perfect fit for the issue.

Here’s a short excerpt on what you can expect from the feature but you’re going to have to cop the new issue to read it in full…. So let us address the elephant in the room, as it were… The Accent Debate….

“I’ve lived here [USA] for six years and I’ve had everybody over here really mold me. All the people who have taught me about song structure and taught me how to rap have been American. We’re talking Houston, Miami, Atlanta and those are some heavy sounds and styles. You can definitely see it in my music, it’s a lot more noticeable now than when I first came over, but you take stuff from your teachers, you know. I had Dungeon Family and Mr Lee teach me to fucking rap, you know? What do you expect?

I get it [the debate], but I won’t ever fit that criteria. For me to do it [rap with an Australian accent] would just be fake. I moved here when I was 16 and now I’m 21, and it’s like the bridge to adulthood, you know. I said the other day if I had of wanted to be a chef and I couldn’t cook so I moved to, I don’t know, France, to learn how to cook and I came back and people were like “You don’t cook like you’re American! You cook like you’re from France!” Could you really be mad at that? Look at who taught me. I didn’t know how to cook anything before then. So how could I have not taken anything from the fucking culture?”

Valid points,  I think you’ll agree… This is a woman who’s also got a very clear idea on how she wants to be marketed. And it looks like it’s working pretty good so far….

“I always say in my label meetings “Don’t come to me and give me the urban department – ‘cause I don’t wanna hear about it.” I don’t. I don’t want to be marketed as an urban artist; I want to be marketed like a pop artist. The same way Nicki Minaj is – it’s smart. If you have that platform you can use it. Like urban artists are limited, only people looking for that type of music are going to hear it. But I wanna be on something that gets a bigger audience. I wanna be marketed as pop because then it skips that whole “Is it an urban crossover thing?” What the fuck is crossover anyway?

 I think to be marketed as urban means it defines who listens to you which to me doesn’t work, as I’m not a typical rap artist and a lot of the fans aren’t typical fans either. I don’t want to be marketed in a typical way. They’re talking about getting a PR guy because I’m at the point now – and they are like “Who are the big urban PRs?” I’m like fuck those guys! Who is Kim Kardashian’s PR? Or who are these big mother-fucking-actress’ PRs? I need to know. I need someone who can get me on a runway or in Rolling Stone. Urban artists can only go so far.”

To read more, cop the issue here.

Photos by Brook Nipar