Iggy Azalea Trivia: 43 interesting facts about the rapper!

Iggy Azalea is an Australian rapper, singer, actress, songwriter, model and director. Born in Sydney and raised in Mullumbimby, Azalea moved to the United States at the age of 16 to pursue a career in hip hop music, residing in the southern part of the country. She earned public recognition after releasing YouTube music videos for her songs “Pu$$y” and “Two Times”.

She signed a record contract with T.I.’s imprint Grand Hustle Records in 2012, after gaining attention from her debut mixtape Ignorant Art.

Let’s find out some facts about her!

1. Amethyst Amelia Kelly was born 7 June 1990 in in Sydney.

2. She was brought up in Mullumbimby, New South Wales.

3. Her father, Brendan Kelly, was a European-Australian painter and comic artist, while her mother, Tanya, cleaned holiday houses and hotels.

4. Azalea lived in a house that her father built by hand from mud-bricks, surrounded by 5 hectares (12 acres) of land.

5. According to Azalea, she has some Aboriginal (Indigenous Australian) ancestry: “My family came to Australia on the First Fleet. My family’s been in that country for a long time, over 100 years. If your family’s lived in Australia for a long time, everyone has a little bit of [Aborigine blood]. I know my family does because we have an eye condition that only Aboriginal people have.”

6. Azalea has also said that her father “made her look at [art] as a teenager”, which has always influenced her life and work.

7. She got her first fake ID at the age of 13. “When I was 13 I got a fake ID. I’d go out, get hammered off my face in nightclubs because I thought that made me an adult, meet older guys who thought I was older, and go f*ck them. I’d do that all the time. Hitchhiking was something I would do all the time as a kid. When I was 14 I used to go to the red light district called Kings Cross and go to strip clubs,” she told Complex magazine.

8. She began rapping at age 14.

9. Before embarking on a solo career, Azalea formed a group with two other girls from her neighbourhood: “I was like, I could be the rapper. This could be like TLC. I’ll be Left Eye.”

10. Azalea eventually decided to disband the group because the other girls weren’t taking it seriously: “I take everything I do serious. I’m too competitive.”

11. In pursuit of her desire to move to America, Azalea dropped out of high school.

12. She worked and saved the money she earned by cleaning hotel rooms and holiday houses with her mother. She claims to have hated school, which, apart from art class, only made her miserable.

13. She also said she had no friends and was teased for her homemade outfits.

14. Azalea travelled to the United States in 2006, shortly before she turned 16.

15. She told her parents she was going “on a holiday” with a friend, but eventually decided to stay and shortly afterwards told them she was not coming back home: “I was drawn to America because I felt like an outsider in my own country, I was in love with hip hop, and America is the birthplace of that, so I figured the closer I was to the music, the happier I’d be. I was right.”

16. She recalled, “My mum was crying, saying, ‘Just be safe.’ I was thinking, ‘I’m going by myself. I’m fucking crazy!’.”

17. After her arrival in the U.S., she received her GED, and resided in the country on a visa waiver for six years, returning to Australia every three months to renew it.

18. Azalea worked in the U.S. illegally until February 2013 when she was granted a five-year O visa.

19. When she first moved to Miami, she only knew one person, Derak, whom she met online while browsing rap music online. She stayed with him for a while before getting her affairs in order.

20. The worst day job she ever had was as a supermarket cashier. “You have to stand up all day long. When you’re a cashier, that’s hours and hours on end. You’re not allowed to sit down and they made me wear leather work shoes, which were really uncomfortable and had no f****** support. I was making like $7 an hour and in Australia everything was expensive. A sandwich was $7, so you’re like, ‘S***! I just had to stand around for an hour, and work is worthless because I bought lunch. I hate this f****** job.'”

21. She took her stage name from the name of her childhood dog, Iggy, and the street she grew up on, Azalea Street.

22. Prior to fame, she was signed to a big-deal modeling agency – Wilhelmina Models. She was dubbed the “New Face of Levi Jeans.”

23. Apart from “The Beatles,” Iggy is the only singer to have the #1 and #2 slots simultaneously with her first two Hot 100 hits (“Fancy and “Problem” with Ariana Grande).

24. One of her all-time faves movies is Clueless which was the theme of her “Fancy” music video.

25. She usually gets a tattoo as soon as she thinks of it. “Every single one of my tattoos I got the day I thought of it.”

26. Iggy first appeared on the scene in 2011 when her songs “Pu$y” and “My World” went viral on YouTube.

27. Azalea was the first female and international rapper to make it on XXL’s annual Top 10 Freshman list.

28. Her go to work-out regime consists of squats and sit-ups.

29. Revolve Clothing has its own Iggy Azalea shopping section.

30. She also told Complex Magazine “hitchhiking was something I would do all the time as a kid.”

31. Azalea has been outspoken about the sexism rampant in the music industry and especially in the hip-hop world, from music industry executives all the way down to fans. She told Billboard that the American rap world, due to antiquated beliefs held by major labels, seems to only have room for one woman at a time: “I can only hear one female rapping on the radio here,” she said. The sexism doesn’t stop with the big executives, though. When asked in an interview with Hot 97 about crowd surfing, she said she’s had to stop doing that and install barricades at her shows because “people try to finger me.”

32. The rapper T.I. took Azalea under his wing and made her a part of his Grand Hustle crew. That relationship has not been without friction, but it has been highly beneficial for the young artist, over whom T.I. can be very protective. “I do take advice from T.I. … It sometimes gets frustrating to me … because people think that maybe he dictates my sound or how I make a song or what songs I do. And for any artist, that’s frustrating. Yeah, T.I.’s the big homie and I really respect him, and if he gives me an opinion of course I’m going to listen to it,” she said during a radio interview with The Breakfast Club.

33. In late 2011, Azalea began dating American rapper ASAP Rocky, whom she met through American record producer Chase N. Cashe.

34. She had his mixtape tattooed on her fingers. Around the time of her January 2012 interview with Vibe, she got the title of his breakout mixtape, Live. Love. A$AP, tatted on her fingers. She stated that Rocky also had a tattoo of her name, yet it was not visible. Since the breakup, she has had the tattoo crossed out.

35. She began a relationship with Los Angeles Lakers basketball player Nick Young in November 2013. Azalea and Young were featured in the March 2014 issue of GQ magazine. They resided together in Tarzana, California.

36. On 1 June 2015, they announced their engagement. On 19 June 2016, Azalea announced that she and Young had split.

37. In March 2015, while talking about her body shape with Vogue, Azalea revealed she had undergone breast augmentation, saying, “I did change something: Four months ago, I got bigger boobs! I’d thought about it my entire life,” adding she was sick of having to sew padding into her stage costumes and wanting to be able to wear lingerie without wiring. After initially resolving never to discuss it publicly as she didn’t want other girls to feel bad about their own bodies, she concluded, “But then, I decided I wasn’t into secret-keeping.”

38. Azalea’s forearm tattoo, which reads “Trust Your Struggle,” is something she read on a wall when she first moved to Los Angeles to pursue music.

39. She is 5’ 10″ (1.78 m) tall.

40. Iggy and Rita Ora are BFFs and collaborated on “Black Widow” which is on Iggy’s album The New Classic and was written by Katy Perry.

41. She’s a fan of hillbilly tacos, a creation made of a taco shell slathered in butter with minced meat and grated cheese.

42. Iggy Azalea’s net worth is $6 million.

43. Despite being an Aussie through and through, this rapping sensation fakes a southern accent when she raps.