Iggy Azalea
The New Classic
Release Date: Apr 22, 2014
Genre(s): Rap, Alternative Rap, Underground Rap, Pop-Rap
Record label: Island
Music Critic Score
How the Music Critic Score works
Buy The New Classic from Amazon
Album Review: The New Classic by Iggy Azalea
Acceptable, Based on 19 Critics
Based on rating 8/10
Head here to submit your own review of this album. Iggy Azalea is a rapper who needs no introduction, which is a remarkable achievement for a woman who is yet to release her debut album. However with a series of impressive singles under her belt, a handful of awe-inspiring festival performances and collaborations with the likes Charli XCX and T.I, it's not really surprising that she's rapidly becoming a household name.
Based on rating 6/10
Remember Gucci Gucci? Kreayshawn? Something About Kreay? I thought not. She wasn’t even a flash in the pan. I didn’t pay attention to anything she released and it wasn’t because she wasn’t a black rapper. It was because she was little more than a gimmick. I couldn’t take her seriously ….
Based on rating 3/5
Iggy Azalea is a 23-year-old American South-via-Australia rapper whose geographically ambiguous flow tends to rankle detractors. Her debut album won't necessarily convert the haters. On Don't Need Y'All, she cops Drake's downtempo vibe to painfully derivative effect. Country-influenced 100 sees her stilted flow overpowered by a hook from Atlanta-based production crew Watch the Duck.
Based on rating 6/10
Australian rapper Iggy Azalea's rise to Island Records/Hustle Gang status was quite strange, seeing as how she was a high fashion model gone Dirty South rap, like some kind of Down Under mix of Lana Del Rey and Trina. Dating A$AP Rocky meant she had her rap game proper, and it was all the more tantalizing when her privileged party anthems landed some whip smart punch lines, but two tracks into The New Classic, "Don't Need Y'all" take her from detached to jaded, making this debut album one icy cold coming out party. By the album-closing "F**K Love," her snarled declaration "I'm already in love with myself" is a redundant credo of epic proportions, but get past the narrow "me me me" theme of the album and it's amazing how "live" it all feels.
Based on rating 3/5
"I was wide awake/Got slept on," huffs rapper Iggy Azalea on Walk the Line, the opener on her much-delayed debut album. The Australian first surfaced in 2011, gracing the cover of hip-hop bible XXL in 2012; last year, her persuasive single Work seemed to signal a full-length. A year later, The New Classic doesn't feel tardy. Granted, Azalea is the most lurid sort of pop rapper, dropping labels, shedding outerwear and dripping attitude, and songs like New Bitch, in which she upbraids her man's old girlfriend, won't endear her to some.
Based on rating 3/5
Australian rapper Iggy Azalea's debut has appeared in recently typical form for the genre: with a long delay and slew of singles. The New Classic barely resembles the west coast hip-hop Azalea idolised and imitated when developing her voice, and sits somewhere between EDM, dance-pop and trap music. Azalea can still spit out rapid-fire verses, but this album feels less forward-thinking than her 2011 Ignorant Art mixtape.
Based on rating 6/10
If the decision to slavishly homage iconic 1995 teen comedy Clueless to stage the video for her single 'Fancy' is any indication, Iggy Azalea has her own retromaniac idea of what constitutes 'classic'. Watching her rap "First things first I'm the realest" in Cher Horowitz's clothes was just priceless. In 'Pu$$y' off her first, tentative mixtape Ignorant Art, she sampled the bit where Grace Jones lambasts Eddie Murphy in 1992 film Boomerang.
Based on rating 5.5/10
Iggy Azalea :: The New ClassicVirgin EMIAuthor: Matt JostOf late, some rather old debates are making a comeback. Last year Lord Jamar reminded Macklemore and other white rappers of their "guest" status in hip-hop, while the other week Prodigy took offense to being reviewed by Jayson Greene, labeling the Pitchfork critic (via Twitter) as an "outsider peeking in" who is "not learned in this lifestyle or music" and therefore unable to "make a proper assessment" of his art. Both rappers have helped author two indisputable classics, Brand Nubian's "One For All" and Mobb Deep's "The Infamous," respectively.
Based on rating 2.5/5
A healthy ego is pretty much a prerequisite to achieve major success in any art form. So it's understandable that Iggy Azalea would title her debut album The New Classic. While it's a preposterous assertion that this serviceable collection of dance-pop and Dirty South hip-hop tracks would be considered the beginning of a new direction for the genre, it's just this kind of ridiculous posturing that can feel exhilarating, even charming, when delivered with an imaginative kind of swagger.
Based on rating 2.5/5
In a now altogether too common meeting of marketing prowess and the expectations of a society in the throes of progression, Australian-born emcee Iggy Azalea’s debut album The New Classic is just that; a modern twist on mainstream marketing’s ideal of beauty and expectations from popular music. Depending on perspective, Azalea unfortunately (or fortunately) follows in a long line of physically attractive blondes pushed to the stars by the music industry. In that being said instead of Azalea’s unique gifts as a lyricist being showcased, the album feels flat and uninspiring.
Based on rating 2/5
Iggy Azalea grew up in Australia, but you'd never know it from her accent – a curiously affected drawl that could come from Atlanta, Houston or nowhere at all. Once, such weirdness might have disqualified her from rap stardom, but that was then. Iggy swaggers through her first LP with all the zero-fucks-given zest of the Nineties baby she is, trumpeting her story on underdog anthems like "Work" and "Don't Need Y'all." Savvier still, she dresses them up in the kind of shamelessly poppy hooks that make Top 40 programmers giggle in delight and "real hip-hop" heads shake theirs sadly.
Based on rating 2/5
Iggy Azalea was born and raised in Australia. Not that you’d know it, from the faux-American accent she raps in on this much-delayed debut. Azalea grew up in Mullumbimby, a hippy town in New South Wales. Ostracised by her pop-loving peers for hero-worshipping Tupac Shakur, she made plans to escape.
Based on rating 3/10
Iggy Azalea has been working on and touting her debut record for over two years. With that much time, she could have cooked up something less generic and a bit more memorable. The directionless album may have a number of songs that will make radio programmers drool, but the staying power resembles anything but a classic. (www.iggyazalea.com) .
Opinion: Excellent
The New Classic is an ambitious pop-rap record, steering Iggy Azalea out of her comfort zone – you can glimpse her actually singing for example, and she dabbles in acoustic soul (“100”) as well as electro-reggae/dancehall-lite (“Lady Patra”) alongside her standard trappy chart-bait. It’s not a groundbreaking record sonically – though it is fantastic, it’s her story and her words that are the draw. It’s a pretty famous story, summed up in “Work”, but essentially, she moved from her native Oz to Miami age 16, all alone, to pursue a career in rap.
Opinion: Fairly Good
"When the smoke clears I'm the last bandit," Iggy Azalea raps optimistically on 'Walk The Line', a stand-out track on her long-awaited debut album. Part of a scene jostling with vibrant new female MCs – from 3D Na'tee in New Orleans to Philly girl Asia Sparkes and Nyemiah Supreme from Queens – Azalea has her work cut out for her. After two firing mixtapes, 5 million YouTube hits and a clutch of Top 20 singles including 'Work' and the irrepressible 'Bounce', she is making headway, but is not without detractors.
Opinion: Fairly Good
Jam Master Jay and the other late pioneers of the genre would almost certainly turn in their graves after an MC from Mullumbimby, Australia, became the first female to grace the cover of XXL’s esteemed Freshman Cover back in 2012. But while it’s tricky to raid the buzz of blogosphere criticism, Iggy has spent much of the interim months morphing like-minded skeptics into converts. Her equal-parts stubborn and unflinching persistence has garnered the respect of hip-hop royalty like Nas and 2 Chainz.
Opinion: Fairly Good
Background: Student moved to Miami from Mullumbimby, New South Wales, Australia, at the age of 16 with the goal of becoming a rapper. Student is not the first white Australian woman to have attempted this course — cf. Jessy Moss — but she is the most ambitious, and the most well known to date. Work Quality: Student appears to have fully internalized the modes of hip-hop, particularly from the South, on this, her debut album.
Opinion: Mediocre
Iggy Azalea The New Classic (Island) Not long ago, Iggy Azalea's rise would've constituted a watershed development. A spunky Aussie rapper? Orthodoxy shock! Between Ke$ha's chart rule, Kreayshawn's hotshot moment, Danny Brown's androgyny, and Mykki Blanco's homosexuality, those lines remain permanently blurred. That doesn't make Azalea's major-label debut any less glib.
Opinion: Disappointing
opinions byAUSTIN REED Iggy Azalea, The New Classic Thank God none of us were tasked with determining the success of Iggy Azalea’s major label debut The New Classic based entirely upon pre-album single “Fancy.” Because had that been the case, odds are uncharacteristically high that it would have qualified as one of the biggest successes of the year. But it isn’t until making a painstaking run through Azalea’s 12-song full-length that you notice some deeply-depressing-yet-much-necessitated context. “First things first: I’m the realest,” Azalea quips confident on “Fancy.” Well, first things first: No, she’s not.
'The New Classic'
is available now