Artist News

Snoop apologises over Iggy row (with doubtable sincerity)

By | Published on Thursday 16 October 2014

Snoop Dogg

An online ‘row’ of sorts between Snoop Dogg and Iggy Azalea has been going on this week, and hey, it kind of still is. Great.

It aaaaallll started with Snoop – whose main complaints re Iggy are that she’s white, female and raps (occasionally all at the same time) – dissing Azalea via a ‘basic’ and pretty racist/sexist meme on Instagram. I should say that Snoop, as his Insta-feed will testify, does love a good meme, and quite a lot of bad and deliberately distasteful ones too, and that initial one involving Iggy was only a drop in an ocean of memes.

Inevitably, Iggy wasn’t so fond of the one dedicated to her, and replied in a series of since-erased tweets (saved by XXL) to the effect that, since she and Snoop had met in the past and been amicable, she felt “disappointed that [he’d] be such an ass for no reason”.

There’s been a lot of ‘developing hip hop beef’-themed press since that first to-and-fro; and many, many more anti-Iggy Insta-jabs from Snoop, who is basically revelling in the whole thing, even going to these highly-questionable lengths.

It’s all kind of silly, really, and certainly symptomatic of a feeling within certain camps that, as a white Australian ‘chick’ with a highly-sexualised image, an American rap accent and what’s best described as a very ‘lite’ and poppy best-selling LP in ‘The New Classic’, Azalea is some kind of hip hop interloper to be picked on and maybe, prised off the scene altogether. And Snoop, who isn’t exactly famed for his earnest demeanour (ie he’s done some pretty silly and ‘lite’ things himself – a list-and-a-half), nor strident and enlightened feminist views, is only the latest in a long line to do the picking.

And pointing finally to misogyny, which is perhaps at the heart of people like Snoop’s real gripe with all female rappers/female humans, whether they choose to realise it or not, let’s end this long and winding road to nowhere with a ‘POV of the day’ from Pitchfork / Complex / Billboard / Fader / everything writer Craig Jenkins, who says: “It’s easy to say what Snoop did was wrong because he crossed a line. Tougher to think about all the shit that DOESN’T bother us that should”.

So please all go away and think, for God’s sake. Though following some of the thinking I’ve just done about it all, Snoop posted a new video announcing that the beef with Iggy is now “officially over”. In fact, he claims, there will be “no more bad talk” and that he’s sorry. So it can work, see?

That said, I’m not really sure quite how sincere one can be in a fifteen second Instagram video. Especially while smirking like that.



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