Iggy Azalea Fans Can Blame Nick Young For Delayed ‘Distortion’

Iggy Azalea has opened up to the reasons for the delay of her latest album Digital Distortion. And they begin and end with her ex, Nick Young.

In an interview with People, Azalea described the personal turmoil she went through following the revelation that Young had cheated on her with his ex, Keonna Green, and how it led to her decision to delay her album’s release.

“I needed a lot of time,” she said before matter-of-factly detailing her predicament. “I mean, you wake up one morning and your fiance is having a baby with someone else, you’re going to need some time, right?”

That discovery sent her music spiraling into different directions, noting that she was engaged when she wrote the original tracks on the album. But following the demise of her relationship, it sent Iggy into new lyrical territory.

“I just kind of felt like, on top of me needing the personal time, then feeling, ‘Okay, I’m single now. I want to have sexy songs. I want to say stuff about being single.’ I obviously didn’t write that on my [original] album because when I wrote it I was about to get married … I don’t want to go and promote my album and get asked about my relationship that has just crumbled.”

The collapse of Azalea’s relationship to Young is yet another stumbling block in the career of this once promising rapper. Bursting onto the scene with her hit single “Fancy,” Iggy Azalea was nominated for a Grammy and appeared to be on the fast track to stardom.

But soon Azalea and rapper Azealia Banks’ Twitter feud opened up a can of worms for Iggy within the hip-hop community that has continued to this day, as reported by Us Weekly. Aside from simply taking shots from Banks, the feud actually opened up the discussion as to whether or not Iggy was responsible for appropriating black culture with her music.

Azalea went from rising star to target, with several of hip-hop’s mainstays including Snoop Dogg and Q-Tip slamming Azalea for co-opting their sound and selling it to white America. She was even slammed at the BET awards in November 2015 by R&B icon Erykah Badu, as reported by the Mirror, who said, “What you’re doing is definitely not rap.”

The Australian-born rapper has also long suffered rumors that her mentor T.I. ghost wrote most of her lyrics, a rumor apparently substantiated to many when she failed to freestyle when appearing on Hot 97’s morning show in 2013, as reported by USA Today.

lol this was @IGGYAZALEA ‘s face at the exact moment Sway asked her to freestyle pic.twitter.com/zPtXKwXe2r

— Aamer Rahman (@aamer_rahman) December 28, 2014

“Iggy refused to freestyle to any of the ‘hood… beats’ the DJs were playing and chose to do it acapella,” the article stated. “Which is fine and all — if she wasn’t just spitting the lyrics to her song…Iggy’s poor excuse for freestyling caught the attention of Twitter and Tumblr, whose users have made fun of it relentlessly.”

Bottom line, Iggy Azalea is desperate for a critically successful follow-up to 2014’s The New Classic to prove that she’s got staying power within the hip-hop community. And while it’s certainly understandable that Nick Young’s cheating ways have forced her to rethink the entire disc, it certainly doesn’t help her career situation.

One silver lining for Azalea, however, is that many artists mine breakups for commercially successful music. Just look at pop stars Adele and Sam Smith, who turned heartbreak into super-stardom with their respective works. If Iggy Azalea can use the Nick Young cheating scandal as a springboard for that, there’s hope the Australian rapper could be in for a big 2017.

[Featured Image by Jason Merritt/Getty Images]