Iggy Azalea’s New Album ‘Digital Distortion’: Release Date And More
Iggy Azalea has been out of the media spotlight for some time, and her sophomore album Digital Distortion keeps getting pushed back to later and later release dates. Azalea made her first high-profile public appearance in recent weeks at a GQ Australia party last night, where the controversial rapper accepted an award for Woman of the Year.
The GQ Australia event gave Azalea an opportunity to walk the red carpet and deliver a short, humorous speech about being a woman in the music industry. Her appearance last night drew praise for her daring fashion choice of wearing a blazer without anything under it. At no point, however, did Iggy mention her upcoming second album Digital Distortion.
Iggy Azalea’s first studio album The New Classic was a bonafide hit, reaching No. 3 on the Billboard 200 charts in the United States and charting in the top five in Canada, Australia, and the United Kingdom. “Fancy,” the first single off of The New Classic, was a smash summer hit and was Iggy’s first number one song on the Billboard Hot 100 chart.
While Azalea reached plenty of commercial success with follow-up single “Black Widow,” the rest of the music she has released in recent years has failed to match “Fancy” levels. Until Iggy releases Digital Distortion, she will be labeled as a rapper with one hit album and a bunch of songs that were tepid attempts to recapture that success.
So, when will Iggy release Digital Distortion to the masses? The release date of Azalea’s second album has been pushed back multiple times over the past year. The rapper released a buzz track entitled “Azillion” in January 2016 but did not receive the response she was looking for, according to Billboard. She claimed that the response to the track “wasn’t good enough” and that her label would not allow her to release a music video for it.
On March 18 of this year, Azalea dropped “Team,” the first official single off of Digital Distortion, with a “Sorry”-style dance video.
Though the song and Azalea’s performance received positive critical reviews, it did not cause a lot of buzz for Digital Distortion. “Team” only peaked at No. 42 on the Billboard Hot 100, where it remained on the chart for eight weeks. When Azalea released “Team,” Billboard reported that Digital Distortionwould be released in June 2016.
Since then, however, the album has been pushed back repeatedly as Iggy has experienced setbacks in both her personal life and career. During June, the proposed month during which Azalea would release Digital Distortion, Iggy broke up with her fiance, basketball player Nick Young, due to his infidelity. As reported in Idolator, Azalea gave an update on Digital Distortion the next month, blaming her rocky personal life for the delay and promising that the album would be out in August.
“My album is finished, but I’ve been blindsided by a lot of things happening in my personal life recently. [I] just needed to have some me time to get my life in order and process the changes that are happening in my private life.”
Iggy also revealed that the album will not feature many guest verses by other rappers.
“I didn’t make a collaboration-heavy album this time around. The only collaboration on the album is with rapper YG, who I worked with on my first mixtape.”
August of 2016 came and went without Azalea releasing Digital Distortion. Idolator reported that Iggy had returned to the studio to continue working on the album and that she would be releasing another single with fellow rapper French Montana. This single, however, has yet to make an appearance.
Azalea has been teasing Digital Distortion for an entire calendar year at this point, and the final word so far is that the album will be released in January 2017, according to News.com.au. Time will tell whether or not Azalea will release her sophomore album by then.
Are you looking forward to Iggy Azalea’s Digital Distortion?
[Featured Image by Alberto E. Rodriguez/Getty Images]
