Amethyst Amelia Kelly was born in Sydney and brought up in Mullumbimby, New South Wales. Her father, Brendan Kelly, was a Irish-Australian painter and comic artist, while her mother, Tanya, cleaned holiday houses and hotels. Azalea lived in a house that her father built by hand from mud-bricks, surrounded by of land. According to Azalea, she has some Aboriginal (Indigenous Australian) ancestry: "My family came to Australia on the First Fleet. My family's been in that country for a long time, over 100 years. If your family's lived in Australia for a long time, everyone has a little bit of [Aboriginal blood]. I know my family does because we have an eye condition that only Aboriginal people have." Azalea has also said that her father "made her look at [art] as a teenager", which has always influenced her life and work. She began rapping at age 14. Before embarking on a solo career, Azalea formed a group with two other girls from her neighbourhood: "I was like, I could be the rapper. This could be like TLC. I'll be Left Eye." Azalea eventually decided to disband the group because the other girls weren't taking it seriously: "I take everything I do serious [sic]. I'm too competitive." In pursuit of her desire to move to America, Azalea dropped out of high school. She worked and saved the money she earned by cleaning hotel rooms and holiday houses with her mother. She claims to have hated school, which, apart from art class, only made her miserable. She also said she had no friends and was teased for her homemade outfits. Azalea travelled to the United States in 2006, shortly before she turned 16. She told her parents she was going "on a holiday" with a friend, but eventually decided to stay and shortly afterward told them she was not coming back home: "I was drawn to America because I felt like an outsider in my own country, I was in love with hip hop, and America is the birthplace of that, so I figured the closer I was to the music, the happier I'd be. I was right." She recalled, "My mum was crying, saying, 'Just be safe.' I was thinking, 'I'm going by myself. I'm fucking crazy!'." After her arrival in the US, she received her General Educational Development (GED), and resided in the country on a visa waiver for six years, returning to Australia every three months to renew it.