In my defense

In early 2016, Azalea released the song " Team ", which was supposed to be the lead single in support of the second studio album, called Digital Distortion ^[11] . Several other songs were released over the next two years, including the singles “ Mo Bounce ,” “ Switch, ” and “ Savior .” At the end of 2017, Azalea announced that the album would not be released because it was leaked to the network and she was working on a new record ^[12] . Soon after, it was announced that she had signed with Island Records . In mid-2018, Azalea released the Survive the Summer mini-album ^[13] . A few months after its release, Azalea announced that she was leaving Island Records and was now an independent artist.

On August 11, 2018, Iggy Azalea published a post on the social network Twitter , in which she expressed her desire to return to the studio to record a new album ^[14] . In November of that year, Azalea signed a deal with Empire's record label worth several million dollars after terminating the contract with Island Records ^{[15] [16] [17] [18]} .

In February 2019, the singer announced the release of the song “ Sally Walker ” as the first single from the upcoming album ^[19] . The single was released on March 15, 2019 ^[20] . A music video for the song was released that day ^[21] . In April 2019, Iggy announced the release of her second single, “ Started, ” which was released on May 3. On July 19, along with the video clip, the third single from the album, “Fuck It Up”, was released together with rapper Kash Doll. On the same day the album itself was released. On June 28, along with the pre-order of the album, the promotion single “Just Wanna” became available.

In My Defense received mostly negative reviews from music critics. According to the Metacritic website , the average album rating is 39 out of 100 (based on four reviews). Craig Jenkins from Vulture stated that “The album is an ongoing disappointment since Digital Distortion ” ^[22] . In a review for Clash, Nicholas Tyrell writes: “Azalea improved its flow, although the stories are not entirely relevant,” he also noted that “Azalea is trying to give us what we want to hear, but not what is on her mind” ^{[4 ]} . In a negative review for Pitchfork, Dani Blum notes that the album is a caricature of rap, there are too many basses in the songs, “skrrrt”, “dear tinsel”, many tracks sound like they are imitations of how rap songs that she looks today admires. She also criticized the lyrics, comparing the lyrics of some songs with the captions on Instagram ^[7] .