Australian rapper Iggy Azalea has given up on her dream of becoming a tanned goddess because she hates to fake it and refuses to risk skin cancer by lying on the beach.

The Work hitmaker admits she grew up near Sydney with the mindset of getting bronzed - because all the sexy girls had tans, but then her grandfather started undergoing skin cancer surgery linked to his sun worshipping and she started covering up.

Azalea tells Complex magazine, "I used to have a tan, but my family always had skin cancer. When I hit 15, and my grandfather started to get a lot of s**t chopped off his face and scooped out of his body, I was like, 'Oh, s**t, everyone in my family older than 50 has skin cancer! Maybe I should stop rubbing baby oil all over myself and laying in the sun after school'."

The famously pale hip-hop star adopted a fake tan when she first arrived in Miami, Florida in a bid to convince potential suitors she was Latin, but she quickly gave up on that, explaining, "That s**t sucks. It makes your bed sheets brown and you can't buy any nice clothes because the underarms will be ruined forever.

"And when you're having sex and get sweaty, you smell like fake tan, which stinks like s**t."