How Many Ways Is Iggy Azalea's Live Performance Awesome? Five.
Since the release of her debut studio album in April of this year, Miss Iggy Azalea has been blowing up the hip-hop game. Her album, New Classic, took over as the highest-charting female rap album when it was released. Some might argue that Iggy stole the spot from Nicki Minaj's Pink Friday: Roman Reloaded, released in 2012. And lately, it seems like you can't turn on the radio without hearing that Australian twang pouring out of it. It's really no surprise that we were pumped to experience her rap game live this past Friday night at Pier 97.
Iggy Azalea's song "Fancy" opened summer 2014 with a bang. This new hit went to the top of the charts almost immediately making her the fourth solo female rapper ever to top the Hot 100. Seeing Miss Fancy herself did not disappoint. Here are 5 ways, even in concert, Miss Iggy Iggs keeps things fancy:
Her concert is like a classed-up version of a Justin Bieber concert...
..with less crime and better music. From the second you walk through gates, pop music from the '90s to now was pouring out of the sound system to get everybody turned up. While it was a respectively young crowd, every part of her show bridged that generation gap—there were a lot of pre-teen mothers and fathers in the crowd. But what shocked us the most was the PG-13 rated lyrics she was delivering. Turning bitch into chick and shit into shhh, Iggy was trying to keep it clean for the sake of the youngsters and their parents. We can appreciate Iggs keeping it respectful.
Girl can move, and she's not afraid to work it!
Everyone's new goal in life needs to be: Take a Zumba class with Iggy Azalea. Her videos give you a glimpse of how this girl and her dancers can shake it, but in concert, it looked like there was an earthquake on stage! At the risk of going off on a tangent, let's just say that Miley Cyrus needs to pay attention because Iggy puts the werk in twerk.
Her pop culture references are flawless.
They're like little inside jokes all over the place. No one talks about them, but we see the references, we know they're there, and we love her for them. The first glimpse we saw of it was in Iggy Azlaea's video for "Fancy," set in the Clueless universe, and then again in her new video "Black Widow," where her and Rita Ora play out an alternate storyline from Quentin Tarantino's Kill Bill. And there's more where that came from. Walking around the venue, we saw fans donning Iggy Azalea jersey-like shirts with the number 23 on them. Anyone? Anyone? Could she be channeling a little bit of Michael Jordan here? That's not all—the stage banner with her name on it was in a font that seemed all too familiar. If we didn't know any better, we'd swear it was the same font used for The Great Gatsby. These little details could have easily been missed, but for those who caught on, we're sure it made them chuckle. We're left thinking, how many references did we miss?
Like any good rookie, she learns from her mistakes.
This is Iggy Azalea's first headlining tour, so she is bound to have some missteps. Previous concert reviews referred to her as being cold and dismissive toward the crowd. That wasn't the case on Friday night. She seemed to be having a ball giving out free t-shirts and even getting some of the crowd's clothing back. She didn't sit down and rap with us about her entire life's story, if that's what they were expecting. She kept it about the music.
Like every classy lady, she leaves you wanting more.
As a very junior member of the rap game, Miss Azalea doesn't exactly have a whole lot of music in her repertoire so performing a concert can get a little difficult, especially since most people only know 2-3 of her songs. She smartly plays parts of the T.I. and Ariana Grande songs that she rapped on to increase the length of the concert. However, even though she plays all of her popular songs and a few that only the superfans know, everyone still wanted her to come back on for more. It's amazing how many words per minute can come out of someone's mouth.We didn't care if we knew the words or not because when Iggy was on stage rapping, we were all floored.