Iggy Azalea's 'Fancy' tops the Billboard Hot 100

Why it matters

June 7, 2014. Iggy Azalea's "Fancy" (featuring Charli XCX) reached #1 on the Billboard Hot 100. It was the first rap single by a solo woman to top the chart since Lauryn Hill's "Doo Wop (That Thing)" in 1998. That same week, the Ariana Grande single "Problem" on which Iggy was featured sat at #2. Iggy held the #1 and #2 positions simultaneously, a feat only previously accomplished by the Beatles. The achievement is one of the more uncomfortable items in the 2010s rap chart history, partly because Iggy Azalea, an Australian MC who had moved to Atlanta as a teenager, was already a controversial figure for her use of a Southern Black vocal register that did not match her actual background. The Hot 100 #1 by a woman rapper had taken sixteen years to repeat after Lauryn Hill, and when it did happen, the rapper was a white Australian. The cultural conversation about authenticity, appropriation, and the female-MC chart drought all converged on this one chart week in summer 2014. You can debate the entire arc of Iggy's career. The chart accomplishment is in the record book regardless.