Side Note

Iggy Azalea is back, again

And now for the 2018 reboot no one was asking for: Iggy Azalea is back in the news cycle with a ritzy new Billboard profile in anticipation of a new album on a new label. You may remember that back in 2015, after a long string of social media controversies and widespread clowning of her rapping abilities, the Australian artist cancelled her Great Escape tour, postponed her second album, and largely retreated from the publicity cycle and the public eye. Since 2015, Azalea has released four non-album singles, a combination of flops and ones with middling success. Now, having transferred from Def Jam to Island records and gotten help from a mental health retreat, Azalea is ready to set Surviving the Summer, her long-delayed, lowly-anticipated second album, loose on the world.

“It’s my passion — I don’t really have a choice,” she told Billboard. It’s perhaps unsurprising, then, that she seems to be learning from her mistakes, as evidenced in the profile and on the record. “Savior,” released at the end of February, takes a step away from the rapping and “blaccent” that got her so much ire in the first place. Instead, it draws much of its musical influence from dancehall to support wholly generic lyrics about loving and wanting someone. It’s hardly the type of banger that could make Azalea haters have a change of heart — but it’s also not the worst thing on the radio either.

From Tonya Harding to Monica Lewinsky, this year has seen a shift in perceptions of previously-villainized women. Could this Iggy Azalea comeback be the end of the mass ire against her? Do you even care? Either way it doesn’t matter — we’re only at the beginning of the media redemption tour.