MC Lyte Called Iggy Azalea An Actor In the Nicest Way Possible

Because MC Lyte is a human with a vagina who raps, she’s been asked about Iggy Azalea on a number of occasions. Twice now, I’ve seen her take the diplomatic approach, this time in addressing Azalea’s rapping blaccent.

By now, criticism of Iggy’s accent is a dead, beaten horse but her popularity remains, so as it is, her name makes its way into other artist’s interviews. Previously, Lyte defended Iggy’s status as a genuine fan of hip-hop.

In this interview with New York radio station Hot 97 last week, Lyte again defended Iggy—the rap genius whose confirmed second language is Gibberish—against some of the backlash. Lyte says:

“I mean, I think Iggy’s style is different. You know, people want to get on her because of wherever she’s from… Wherever she’s from really doesn’t matter. She has a love of the craft, of the art, and the reason why I can say it and mean it is because one of the first tours I ever did was in Denmark, Copenhagen and everybody in the audience looked just like her.”

MC Lyte later answers a question about Iggy’s artificial “twang” in the most gracious and strange way possible, by likening it to British actors:

“Every time we see an English actor, they’re putting it on to act like an American. We don’t get on Idris to act like a homeboy from Baltimore to make his job work. It’s a job, you know. But with Iggy, I think she catches a lot of heat because she’s so damn confident, you know… It’s a catch 22. You wanna be humble but if you’re too humble, they’ll tear you up. So she’s caught between a rock and a hard place.”