Iggy Azalea Got Dissed By Some Of Hip Hop’s Biggest Names

Although Iggy Azalea hasn't released an album since The End of an Era in 2021, she's been trending for months. This time, it's for memes, not her music. She has become a recurring face on livestreams, often appearing alongside Twitch streamer, Neon. Their interactions lean into flirtation and engineered baiting clips, but Azalea shared that she allegedly signed him to a multi-million deal through her digital gaming and media platform, MOTHERLAND.

It's been a curious kind of comeback with Iggy's name in circulation void of records or radio. Even in silence, she provokes a reaction. That's been true for a decade. Few rappers of the 2010s were embraced as quickly, or dismissed as decisively. At her peak, she was celebrated by the industry and centered in Pop charts. Yet, outside the machine, within Hip Hop, the response was a bit colder. Some would say even direct and personal.

Showing up with a Southern drawl, Iggy Azalea was introduced to Hip Hop through co-signs and chart placements, not community. Her voice that didn’t sound the same offstage, and that became a novelty for some listeners. For others, it felt like a mockery.

She wasn’t the first white rapper, but she entered the scene during a decade when Hip Hop’s aesthetics were already being filtered through Pop formulas and brand deals. Still, her rise wasn’t gradual, but it was packaged to sell. At the height of her visibility, Iggy was charting alongside Nicki Minaj and being positioned as a leader in a genre she had barely just entered.

That friction never settled. Black artists watched her climb using a sound and cadence rooted in Southern Black culture. Iggy didn't need acknowledgement or proximity, just support from rappers in the industry. The discomfort was called gatekeeping but it was about ownership. It was about the difference between growing inside a culture and arriving after it’s been monetized.

Eminem dissed Iggy Azalea twice, and both times the tone was dismissal. In 2014, he name-checked her on “Vegas” with a line that referenced sexual violence. “You don’t wanna blow that rape whistle on me.” It wasn’t clever, but crude. Iggy responded publicly, tweeting, “I’m bored of the old men threatening young women as entertainment trend and much more interested in the young women getting $ trend... It’s especially awkward because my 14 year old brother is the biggest eminem fan and now the artist he admired says he wants to rape me. nice!”

Four years later, during Em's feud with Machine Gun Kelly, he also brought her up again on “Killshot” with a line that grouped her with artists he considered irrelevant as he mentioned “that Iggy ho.”

No one mistook Erykah Badu’s delivery for a joke. At the 2015 Soul Train Awards, while pretending to take a phone call during her opening monologue, she told the caller, implied to be Iggy Azalea, that she couldn’t attend because, “what you’re doing is definitely not Rap.” The crowd reacted instantly. The tone was light, but the message wasn’t. Badu’s words carried the weight of someone who doesn’t speak on trends but Hip Hop lineage. In one line, she placed Iggy outside the culture without ever raising her voice.

Meanwhile, Iggy Azalea later reacted to the diss on Twitter, seeming baffled by those who she claimed were trying to discredit her accomplishments.

Halsey didn’t mince words in a 2017 interview with The Guardian. The singer's diss came when said she would never collaborate with Iggy Azalea, accusing of her of having "a complete disregard for Black culture." Halsey added, "F*cking moron. I watched her career dissolve and it fascinated me.”

It wasn’t a throwaway comment. This came during a conversation about navigating identity in the industry. The interviewer suggested Halsey had the power to police her music, and she agreed. Then, she mentioned not featuring Azalea on any future albums, and Iggy took notice of the diss.

“It’s a bit weird to bring someone up in an interview that you weren’t asked about,” Azalea said while visiting Smallzy’s Surgery. “To me, because I’m a famous person and I know a lot of the time people have opinions and they’re not always accurate, I really try very hard not to give my personal opinions about people that I don’t know. And I don’t know her, I’ve never met her.”

Anyone can quickly become a target of online trolling, and in 2014, Azalea found herself in the crosshairs of meme culture. A picture of Iggy without makeup hit social media, and soon, not only was it circulated, but people began creating new memes and making comparisons.

Snoop Dogg added his voice to the chatter, sharing photos of his own. Iggy didn't appreciate the prodding and fired back on Twitter, accusing him of being two-faced. “My bodyguard stopped the fire truck that saved your friend’s life in Canada when he almost burnt down the hotel,” she posted. Iggy also questioned why he would post something to degrade her when his bodyguards come to her shows and ask for photos. Her tweets read like someone who felt betrayed. His responses didn’t match the weight. Snoop just delivered more memes and mockery without remorse.

Later, when Snoop finally backed down, it wasn’t necessarily because he saw the harm. It was because T.I. intervened privately. “I stepped in when it became a public topic of discussion,” Tip previously told MTV. “When it stopped being between two people and it was being observed by the world, and it was almost like people were tuning in just to see what was happening next.” It seemed Snoop was prepared for the conversation before a word was uttered.

“He immediately said he knew what I was calling about and just assured me [that it was] nothing to even worry about. It’s over with. And we started talking about something else immediately," T.I. added. "I didn’t make Snoop do anything.” 

In another award show incident, Nicki Minaj was at the 2014 BET Awards when she, as usual, became the center of attention. The Pink Friday hitmaker was on stage accepting the win for Best Female Hip Hop Artist and delivered an enigmatic speech.

“What I want the world to know about Nicki Minaj is when you hear Nicki Minaj spit, Nicki Minaj wrote it," she said, leaving viewers to speculate about who, or what, she may have been referring to. Coincidentally, the remark came while rising star Iggy Azalea, fresh off the chart‑smash "Fancy," also sat among the Best Female Hip Hop nominees.

Speculation quickly spread that Minaj’s line referenced Azalea’s credibility, particularly rumors of ghostwriting. While Minaj never named Azalea outright, the moment went beyond awards rhetoric. Nicki would later hop on Twitter to dodge the controversy, hinting that she didn't intend to diss anyone, specifically, blaming the Iggy gossip on people looking for trouble. Years after this run-in, Nicki would name drop Iggy on a track, referencing rumors about Azalea's alleged then-relationship with Tory Lanez.

In 2018, Bhad Bhabie took a swing at Iggy Azalea on the remix to “Hi Bich,” rapping, “B*tch, don’t compare me to Iggy / That old ho is washed and I’m lit.” The line was quick, but Bhad Bhabie wanted the world to know that Iggy was irrelevant to a younger crowd coming up online.

These two also took their beef to the internet, where Iggy Azalea threw out a diss of her own in 2018 when someone posted a photo of Bhabie ahead of her tour, asking who planned on attending. Iggy reportedly jumped in the comments with a snide remark, prompting her foe to retort, "You should come. Would be a good memory for u to see what a sold-out show looks like." 

Rah Digga, a respected femcee legend, had quite a bit to say about Iggy Azalea in a 2014 interview with ThisIs50. “Iggy Azalea it’s like I can’t get into her,” she admitted. “Because it’s just not real to me. There is a white girl from Australia that spits in an Australian accent, and her name is Chelsea Jane. That I can get into. Teach me Australian Hip Hop culture. Don’t come to America and try to convince me that you’re Gangsta Boo. Personally, I don’t consider her Hip Hop. I listen to her album. Everything that I hear on there is everything but that. And I feel like Hip Hop is Hip Hop.”

That moment mattered because it shifted the conversation from image to legitimacy. Azalea clapped back on Twitter, once again suggesting she's surprised to see people questioning her career. "I honestly don't really mind if I'm described as rap or pop. My passion is purely making music and entertaining," she wrote. "Its definetly funny seeing ppl get so emotional over it all. What does it matter? music is music and many enjoy mine, no need to feel upset."

No artist challenged Iggy Azalea more consistently, or more publicly, than Azealia Banks. From the beginning, Banks framed her critique as cultural, not just personal. She called out Iggy’s controversial lyrics on "D.R.U.G.S." where the Australian rapper spit lyrics about slavery.

"Iggy Azalea on the XXL freshman list is all wrong," Banks tweeted. "How can you endorse a white woman who called herself a 'runaway slave master'?" Then, she added, "Sorry guys. But I'm pro black girl. I'm not anti white girl, but I'm also not here for any1 outside of my culture trying to trivialize very serious aspects of it."

The conflict spanned years, with Iggy firing back on Twitter and accusing Banks of projecting her frustrations. Yet, the substance was never about pettiness. Banks believed Iggy represented something bigger: a manufactured pipeline into Black culture that skipped the work and the consequences.

Talib Kweli weighed in after Macklemore mentioned Iggy Azalea on “White Privilege II,” noting that Iggy’s defensive reaction to the inclusion exposed the gap between success and cultural accountability. He wrote, “I actually rooted for Iggy when she first came out. But she’s disrespected hip hop culture one too many times.”

Then, Kweli and Azalea had a long, heated exchange that captivated fans on Twitter, where mentions of Black Lives Matter and other issues bubbled to the surface. Talib wanted to know why Azalea didn't use her privilege to speak on Black issues and injustices, but the inquiries didn't land. Kweli also objected to someone rising within Black music culture without visibly recognizing the dynamics that formed it. The moment marked a fracture in how Iggy was perceived by fans and artists rooted in Hip Hop's history.

Her shift to Twitch and viral streaming hasn’t erased the conversations that once surrounded Iggy Azalea's music. It’s just changed the setting. The critiques weren’t random. They came from artists rooted in Hip Hop, many of whom saw her ascent as a case study in how the industry rewards proximity over participation.

"I think the hardest part about [criticism] was seeing how the other artists would distance themselves from me publicly," Iggy said months ago while speaking to ABC News. "That I was only welcomed in secret."

Further, she was never fully embraced by the culture that created the sound she used to make an imprint on a culture she didn't grow up in. Years removed from her peak, the conversations she sparked still echo throughout a genre that remembers exactly who gets crowned, and who gets checked.

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