Well, the lyrics to Beyonce’s Lemonade album are still tearing the freaking country apart for some reason, but in an unexpected twist, the controversial recording has managed to very temporarily unite two longtime rivals.
Yes, it seems Iggy Azalea and Azealia Banks are finally both on the same page about something…kind of.
We’ll start with Iggy, since her criticism of Queen Bey is stupider and therefore easier to unpack.
Like so many others, Iggy has been thinking a lot about Beyonce’s “Becky” line.
Unlike the others, however, Iggy isn’t concerned with the identity of Becky, but rather with what the lyric means for oppressed people … like Iggy Azalea.
Shortly after the “visual album” version of Lemonade hit HBO, someone on Twitter accused Iggy of being racist for objecting to being referred to by the B-word.
(“Becky,” of course. What did you think we meant?)
“Girl BYE,” Iggy tweeted in response. “Do you know how many time ppl have called me BECKY? it didnt have any kind of positive intention behind it. dont start.
Naturally, the tweet left Iggy vulnerable to attack from hundreds of fans who pointed out that the notion Iggy Azalea complaining about being racially discriminated against is a tad ridiculous.
Several media outlets reported the story as I-G-G-Y accusing Beyonce of being racist, an angle that the Aussie rapper took umbrage with:
“Its not clickable if you say it how it is, is it? We all know this game by now,” Iggy tweeted yesterday.
But…if she thinks people who use the word Becky to refer to white women are racist, and Beyonce used the word to…never mind. We’ll leave it to Twitter to tell Iggy how dumb her argument is.
Moving on to the Azealia who’s superior both in terms of rap skills and her ability to piss everyone off, Ms. Banks also took issue with Bey’s lyrics as well, but for very different reasons:
“This heartbroken black female narrative you keep trying to push is the Antithesis of what feminism is,” Azealia tweeted in one of the more intelligent critiques of the album we’ve heard thus far.
“You been singing about this n–ga for years and he still playing you. That’s not strength that’s stupidity.
“And it’s not what the national black women’s conversation needs right now. More pain more suffering in the face of a man.”
“You keep crying over a man and perpetuating that sad black female sufferance and it’s Not good for what we’re trying to accomplish here.”
Again, we won’t weigh in on whether or not we think Azealia is being fair or unfair here, but it’s certainly a more thought-provoking argument than the dumbassery being spewed by the likes of Iggy Azalea and Piers Morgan.
At the end of the day, we like the album from a musical standpoint, and hey – if Jay Z is cool with those lyrics, we’re pretty sure just about anyone can come to terms with them.
