SCENE’s 2024 Person of the Year: Iggy Azalea

Four-time Grammy-nominated artist Iggy Azalea entered the crypto scene this year with her own meme coin, MOTHER. But unlike many of her celebrity counterparts, the project wasn’t a quick cash grab. In fact, she’s redefining what it means to be a celebrity in crypto—and is paving the way for others.

Not that’s it’s been a smooth ride for the Australian rapper. Her crypto journey has been plagued by some of the worst crypto has to offer, including drama, red candles, personal anxiety, and copius sniping from moralizing industry observers.

Yet Azalea’s Solana meme coin MOTHER has become the gold standard for celebrity tokens with the musician continuing to try to increase the value of the token by increasing her presence and taking a personal interest in building out the project and its platform. The artist’s defiance and drive to fight through the tough times, during major price pull backs, is a first in the new world of celebrity meme coins—a shimmering example in crypto of how to use fame to build, rather than plunder.

For these reasons, and as one of crypto’s most visible cultural icons during the past year, Azalea is SCENE’s 2024 Person of the Year.

Azalea’s venture into crypto started while smoking weed on the porch with her crypto degen brother, in May, she told Decrypt. During a series of high-minded conversations, the Aussie musician began to learn the basics of crypto, which drove her curiousity about the industry.

Soon she saw a vision of how a celebrity meme coin could work, and asked her manager if it was possible for her to launch a meme coin—both practically and legally. 

It was of course, and she did—but Azalea’s first foray into the space quickly created drama.

The not-so-merry month of May

To prepare for a token launch and get a better understanding of best practices, Azalea’s manager connected with Sahil Arora—a celebrity coin promoter whose credibility, it later turned out, has been questioned by some, including media personality and short-lived collaborator Caitlyn Jenner. 

Arora and Azalea’s team had a brief discussion about what a potential collaboration could look like—pay, tweet requirements, technical details, and so on. According to emails Arora forwarded to Decrypt, it appears that Azalea’s manager was unsure about the joint venture. But eventually, Arora claims, the team came around to the idea and he sent $40,000 via wire transfer. (Decrypt did not see any evidence of payment.)

Arora also started taking money via his private Telegram group for what was then described as a soon-to-launch IGGY token. Insiders paid him $380,000 in in the pre-sale. When Azalea caught wind of this unapproved token using her brand, she took to Twitter to publicly slam Arora in a series of now deleted tweets; Arora continued to claim that his IGGY token was the real deal, which further incensed her.

“Something like revenge motivates me greatly,” Azalea explained. “When he kept going on about it, being like: ‘This is real and she’s joking’… I was like, ‘Oh man, I’m going to have to bend you over and fuck the shit out of you now.’”

So Azalea launched her own Solana meme coin called MOTHER via launchpad Pump.fun a matter of hours later. It skyrocketed to a market cap just shy of $260 million in less than two weeks—the highest any celebrity created token has climbed. 

It also doomed IGGY, which launched and promptly fell to virtually nothing. Now six months later, IGGY pre-sale participants still haven’t received any tokens or a refund, which Arora said was due to the dust up and the MOTHER token surpassing his coin: “It was too late, she already flipped us and shit […] so [it] didn’t make sense.”

“She’s so culturally relevant and she’s with it,” Alon, the pseudonymous co-founder of meme coin launchpad Pump.fun, told Decrypt, explaining how Azalea’s knowledge of crypto was impressive. “It made us so bullish beyond Crypto Twitter. We knew there was something here for the masses. We absolutely loved that.”

Mother’s Day

But everything that goes up must go down.

MOTHER crashed 82% during the coming month. The wider market had cooled and the celebrity meta was starting to die as more celebs abandoned their meme coins. Azalea’s token traded mostly sideways for two more months. 

“It felt like I was fucking falling out of a plane with no parachute,” Azalea told Decrypt. “It was a rude awakening, to be honest with you.”

Fears that this was just another celebrity token that faded into obscurity started to bubble to the surface. Unlike celebs of the past Azalea stayed active. She said she logged onto Telegram daily to calm people down in the token’s official group chat.

“I was having to manage people’s emotions in the chat,” Azalea said. She wanted to convince MOTHER holders to “keep confidence in something that’s new to people, that doesn’t have a proven track record, and to establish that confidence quickly in those choppy conditions.”

It was a tricky environment. The normal trajectory for celebrity meme coins was for the celebrity to jump ship as soon as the waters got choppy. Jenner’s coins were a fresh example. The former Olympian had also launched two meme coins in May that fell into oblivion once the community started to turn against her and she stopped shilling the tokens.

But Azalea vowed that MOTHER wasn’t going to follow that path. No stranger to fear, uncertainty, and doubt—these were her companions throughout her music career—she said she decided to do what she always does: Gut it out and fight through it. 

“It’s an addiction to some kind of chemical in my brain that I think I’ve been addicted to for a long time—probably because I’m a performer and I’ve retired from that part of my life,” she told Decrypt.

“You get a lot of adrenaline and dopamine when you’re onstage,” she added. “There’s also this kind of weird stress or anxiety that comes in the moments of not knowing. And that part of it, in a fucked-up way, is as addictive as the dopamine reward part.”

So Azalea hung in there. She checked the market every day and she micromanaged the Telegram chat, something she said she still does to this day. On days when the token drops she said she feels a deep anxiety in her stomach—the same feeling she got during her music career as she awaited an album release, a Grammy nomination, or waiting backstage before a big show. 

That’s a big part of why she’s stuck it out in crypto, she said: “I really need it. It’s part of what keeps me waking up and happy in the morning. I like that in a fucked-up way.”

But beyond the psychological and emotional rewards, unlike most other celebrities who issue meme tokens for the quick bucks, Azalea had an actual plan to promote her coin—and, maybe, just maybe, turn it into something bigger. Her goal was to push MOTHER to the top of the meme coin market, and turn it into a blue-chip token alongside the likes of Pepe. 

To that end, she began to execute her plan at Token 2049, Asia’s biggest crypto conference, in October. There, she threw the mother of all parties—The Motherland Rodeo Party. Azalea hired 36 women to dance onstage and with attendees, in a venue adorned with a cowboy motif—a western-style saloon, bales of hay, and more. Her celebrity appeal brought in the influencer crowd, of course, and as the night raged on, tons of clips went viral—including Three Arrows Capital CEO, Su Zhu, making it rain dollar bills over a dancer.

Of course, it wouldn’t be Azalea without drama: At one point, the organizers of Solana Breakpoint—another conference happening in Singapore at the same time—apparently warned her not to twerk alongside dancers during her scheduled talk because it “would go too viral.” And there was some pushback from various corners of the crypto industry—with those not in attendance calling it “cringe” and “goofy.”

Azalea shrugged it all off. “Crypto WILL have ass,” she tweeted, to the delight of her followers.

Putting the ass in crypto did the trick: During the ten days following her party, MOTHER pumped more than 157%.

She partly attributed the success to the kind of chaos that stars bring to celebrity life in the U.S—and she intends to double down. She intends to use the Rodeo Party as a template for three more themed events annually moving forward.

“I want to bring the chaos to the pop culture of crypto,” Azalea explained.

But her vision for MOTHER didn’t stop there. On December 20, the MOTHER project “soft launched” an online casino called Motherland, which plans to feature livestreams of models and other celebrities, with whom punters can gamble MOTHER tokens in real time.

The musician believes this will be a platform that can revolutionize how celebrities engage with crypto. Instead of clueless celebrities creating tokens that they dump within a few weeks, they can sign a streaming deal with Motherland to engage with the culture. 

Of course, execution is everything—especially in crypto. But thus far, Azalea seems to be learning hard and fast, and appears to be as addicted to the world of meme coins as the most veteran of degens, while bringing the luster of celebrity to crypto. 

She’s bringing fun to the culture through events and is set on changing the way that the rich and famous enter the scene. This isn’t just a cash grab, it’s a passionate addiction—similar to her music career. 

“I do not want to leave the space. I want to be a first-mover in every way, shape, or form,” she said, adding. “I want to be a crypto legend!” She appears to be well on her way.