RALEIGH, NORTH CAROLINA – JULY 28: Iggy Azalea performs during the opening night of Pitbull’s “Can’t … [+]
When you think of multi-platinum rapper Iggy Azalea, visions of her record-smashing hits like “Fancy” and “Black Widow” likely come to mind. But the ever-innovative artist has set her sights on blazing new trails in the creator economy with two groundbreaking new projects – Dream Vault and $MOTHER.
For the uninitiated, Iggy Azalea is an Australian rapper who burst onto the music scene in 2014 with her debut studio album The New Classic. With her unique flow and confident persona, she quickly rose to become one of the most successful artists to emerge from the renewed interest in female rap stars. Azalea has won numerous awards including two American Music Awards, three Billboard Music Awards and four MTV Video Music Award nominations.
Her latest ventures, however, have little to do with creating new music. Instead, she is tapping into the power of community and technology to empower creators and fans in unprecedented ways.
Dream Vault – Crowdfunding Platform for Realizing Dreams
Dream Vault is a crowdfunding platform that allows anyone to rally a community around their dreams and goals, whether big or small. As Azalea describes it, “Dream Vault is a platform that I created so that anybody who has a dream, it’s a place where they can try to achieve it and create a community to help them achieve whatever it is that their goal is.”
The inspiration struck Azalea from her own experiences as an independent artist, recalling “there would be times where my friends would gather together and pay for billboards for me and all kinds of crazy things in the name of supporting my career.” She wanted to create an easy way to harness that groundswell of support from one’s community.
But Dream Vault isn’t just for full-time creators and artists. Azalea foresees it being used by anyone trying to achieve a dream, whether it’s funding a destination wedding, assembling volunteers for a community project, or even just crowdsourcing gifts for a kid’s birthday party.
What really sets Dream Vault apart is its focus on building an engaged community around each dream. As Azalea explains, “My focus has always been on trying to build out that social element and landscape of the project and be focused on both the creator and community sides.”
In addition to being the founder, Azalea serves as the creative director for Dream Vault, overseeing everything from the website design and user experience to illustration and marketing. Her goal is to make Dream Vault a rich social experience, not just a transactional crowdfunding platform.
$MOTHER – A “Mean” Entry into Crypto
If Dream Vault represents Azalea’s efforts to empower creators and communities in the real world, then her other major project $MOTHER is aiming to do the same in the wild west of crypto.
$MOTHER is a meme-inspired cryptocurrency and community that Azalea co-founded on the Solana blockchain. As Azalea describes it, “$MOTHER is a meme token and it’s really a community of people where our ethos is that we’re here to disrupt and create a bit of chaos and fun.”
Beyond facilitating meme-worthy crypto trading, one of Mother’s key goals is to educate outsiders about crypto in an approachable, entertaining way. Having been through the learning curve herself, Azalea wants to be “a godmother” of sorts in onboarding both regular people and celebrities into the crypto space and its ardent communities.
Her immersion in the world of meme coins and crypto Telegram groups has been eye-opening for Azalea. “Community is the number one driver of all of these crypto projects,” she observes. “If people could understand that and get into these communities, I think they’d be more interested than they realize.”
Azalea plans to bring her signature brand of irreverence and fun to $MOTHER, creating meme-worthy content and engaging with fans and investors in the community. She hopes $MOTHER can serve as a positive model for how entertainers and influencers should approach crypto – by integrating into the community rather than just seeking a quick cash grab.
The Through-Line: Empowering Creators and Their Communities
Whether it’s helping people pursue passion projects, plan group experiences, or invest in emerging crypto assets, the common thread running through both Dream Vault and $MOTHER is empowering creators to rally communities around their endeavors.
As a creator herself, Azalea has experienced firsthand the power of an engaged community supporting your dreams. Her new platforms aim to replicate that feeling for others, regardless of what their dream entails.
“Everybody has a dream,” Azalea states. “I want to make sure that everybody is thought about, I don’t want to pigeonhole into a particular type of creator.”
With her bold ventures at the intersection of community, crowdfunding, crypto and the creator economy, Iggy Azalea is once again proving she’s an innovator that defies expectations. If her past success is any indication, dismissing these projects as mere celebrity side hustles would be ill-advised.
My full interview with Iggy can be heard on my podcast, The Business of Creators.
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