Everything She Had to Prove

In early 2013, Iggy Azalea was still someone you had to explain. Australian, raised in a small town in New South Wales, relocated to the American South as a teenager, signed to T.I.’s Grand Hustle label, rapping with a conspicuously Southern accent she had apparently just… acquired somewhere along the way. The accent controversy would dog her for years, but in the video for Work, none of that had hardened into discourse yet. She was just a tall blonde woman cycling through a string of low-wage jobs—diner waitress, fast food counter, worse—while rapping about grinding and wanting something more. Blunt, direct, with no particular interest in being likeable about it. Before Fancy turned her into a pop act and the internet found its reasons to hate her, there was this: something harder and stranger and considerably more interesting than what came after.