Iggy Azalea wants you to know she’s not sorry. She mentions this on every track of her new album, braiding it into brags about her money and her body until they snarl together in a petty wreath. It’s an odd package for a record with high stakes: This is her first album in five years, after her planned 2016 release Digital Distortion was shelved, and the first she’s released on her independent label. In those years, she has cemented a reputation built on appropriation and controversy. Name a major artist—Halsey, Snoop Dogg, the cartoon character Peppa Pig—and Iggy has entangled herself in some sort of feud with them. On an album with the unsubtle title In My Defense, she attempts to cast herself as a victim while further distorting and dismissing the cultures she takes from. Less than three minutes into the album, she raps, “Because I talk like this and my ass fat/They be saying Iggy tryna act black.” A few tracks later, she drops the record’s thesis: “I started to say sorry, but fuck that shit.”
Didn’t we cancel Iggy Azalea? Maybe because of the nature of the internet, or because of the privilege that Iggy both willfully ignores and has worn as a shield throughout her career, she’s somewhat positioned for a comeback; media outlets have been hinting at her potential victorious return for years. This album could have been an opportunity to show an ounce of contrition, to own up to her mistakes and demonstrate that she has learned. Iggy is talented: a four-time Grammy nominee with the vocal toolkit and dancefloor command that allowed her to jump on and invigorate hits. (On “Fancy,” she handily eclipsed Charli XCX, a feat that few of Charli’s collaborators have managed.) But talent isn’t an excuse, and on this album, it’s almost irrelevant.
“I just knew I wanted to go to America and be a rapper and have a ponytail and a leopard-skin jacket that went down to my feet, and like, 20 white, fluffy dogs on one leash,” she told Dazed and Confused in 2012. The album is stacked with cartoonish approximations of what she thinks a rap song should sound like: shivers of bass, the occasional “skrrrt,” Mad Libs of designer brands and bodily fluids. Many sound like direct imitations of the rappers she admires. “Sally Walker,” the best song on the album, features sparkling piano chords similar to Cardi B’s “Money” (J. White produced both songs). The exhausting, Juicy J-featuring “Freak of the Week” sounds like a rejected track by Megan Thee Stallion, whose debut album features her own song with the Memphis rapper. She hisses “lil’ bitch” in a way that sounds like Rico Nasty.
It’s possible Iggy sees herself as a pioneer who paved the way for female rappers. Her album starts with “Thanks I Get,” a paltry diatribe about the “little mes” she claims to see. Women have been rapping as well as men for as long as rap has existed, but it’s only now, years after Iggy came on the scene, that they seem to be inching towards getting equal attention. Iggy Azalea is not the only current rapper who fills songs with dreary, monotonous references to sex and money, but many find creative, amusing, and even raw ways to write and spit about both. Instead, Iggy crams her songs with one-liners that sound like branded Instagram captions: “I waste my wine before I ever waste my time”; “Catch flights not feelings.” Even worse are the banal repetitions: “I just wanna nut,” she whispers over a bastardized “Push It” sample, subjecting us to the word “nut” 15 times in under three minutes. Mixed metaphors wilt over predictable beats. I found myself bobbing along automatically to the slumped synths and handclaps, then wanting to hit “next” after 30 seconds of each song.
For an album so concerned about “haters,” the worst we see comes from Iggy herself. “They call me racist/Only thing I like is green and blue faces,” she sneers, managing to corrode and embarrass herself in one line. Rather than penitence, she offers only a garish caricature. Her only defense is to further offend.
