Iggy Azalea is the first white woman to have a No. 1 rap album. The record pays homage to the rap classics of the 1980s and 1990s while trying to capture this moment in 2014 as a culturally relevant time. "[W]ith The New Classic, I want younger generations to look back on what we're doing now and say, 'I wish I was a teenager in 2014.' I come from an era of kids who are always being told that what we make is not classic. But my album says to people my age, 'Don't devalue that we can be culturally significant - because we can be,'" Azalea said of the album in an interview with Billboard.
