Iggy Azalea Gets A Bad Review, Lorde Jumps To Her Defense

Iggy Azalea has a certain New Zealand songstress in her corner these days.

Every musician who releases an album runs the risk of getting a bad review. However, there’s only a few of them who have someone like Lorde watching their back. After the folks over at Complex gave Azalea’s album The New Classic a poor write-up, the “Tennis Court” singer vented her frustrations on Tumblr.

Lorde’s problem with Complex is simple: She feels the magazine did a disservice to Iggy Azalea by giving her a bad review after they featured her on the cover. Although the write-up didn’t completely tear down Azalea and The New Classic, the reviewer definitely had some issues with the album she put together.

The publication explained:

“Iggy Azalea’s other weakness is her voice, which consistently strikes a jarringly inauthentic note. She raps with a tightly-wound drawl, one that, to American ears, feels tone-deaf not musically, but socially. Her voice, in essence, sounds like a put-on version of a particularly technical rapper from the American South. It’s the kind of thing that would make Ke$ha cringe—and that’s ultimately what makes it unique. It’s another contradiction: her rap style begs to be taken seriously, but is instead vaguely silly. Someone from the States would never attempt to pull this off on such a large stage; it requires an outsider’s audacity, a lack of awareness about racial dynamics in the States.”

Since Lorde feels that Iggy Azalea deserves better treatment, the singer issued a sternly-worded post on her official Tumblr page. In short: She thinks Complex wasn’t very fair to Iggy with their assessment of The New Classic.

The singer wrote:

“Bugs me how publications like complex will profile interesting artists in order to sell copies/get clicks and then shit on their records? it happens to me all the time- pitchfork and that ilk being like ‘can we interview you?’ after totally taking the piss out of me in a review. have a stance on an artist and stick to it. don’t act like you respect them then throw them under the bus.”

Although Iggy Azalea certainly agrees with Lorde’s take on the matter, the folks at Complex feel a little different about the situation. Instead of letting the singer off the hook, the magazine issued a response to her Tumblr post.

The magazine explained:

“This issue Lorde highlights is an on-going problem in music writing, one where artists seem to think of journalists as akin to their publicists, and journalists are afraid to say anything bad about an artist for fear of losing access. An artist thinking that just because they’re interviewed by an outlet that said outlet can’t then ‘s*** on your records’ muddies the difference between music profiling and music criticism. The job of a journalist profiling an interesting artist is to bring their story to life for an audience. The job of a music critic writing a review is to put an album in the proper context for listeners and, yes, share their opinion on the album.”

Do you think Complex was wrong to give Iggy Azalea a bad review? Does a cover story automatically guarantee a positive write-up?

[Image via Fashion One Rogue]