Iggy Azalea - In My Defense (LP) - Red Smoke Vinyl

Iggy Azalea’s second studio album, In My Defense, arrived on 19 July 2019 through her own Bad Dreams imprint with Empire handling distribution, and it plays like a line in the sand. After a messy label run, this feels like an artist choosing her lane and flooring it. The mood is glossy and lethal, built for big speakers and late nights, and glued together by the punchy, hook-first production of J. White Did It, who steered the lead singles Sally Walker and Started.

Sally Walker is the welcome-back moment. That piano loop struts with theatre, and Iggy rides it with clipped, almost percussive phrasing that lands every bar on the beat’s front foot. The video’s funeral theme, complete with cameos from RuPaul’s Drag Race alumni, sharpened the whole revival energy. There’s cheek in it, but also focus. Started keeps the momentum up with handclaps that snap like elastic and a chorus tailor-made for gym playlists and Uber radios alike. J. White’s drums are dry and heavy, which leaves plenty of room for Iggy’s tone to cut through. She’s not over-reaching here. She sticks to the pocket, lets the beat breathe, and that discipline pays off.

The features help too. Fuck It Up with Kash Doll is straight crowd control, a tag-team that feels like it was engineered for festival stages and club DJ handoffs. The call-and-response is tight, and the production leans low-end without turning to sludge, so every ad-lib pops. Hoemita with Lil Yachty flicks the mood into something looser and more playful, but the chemistry is there, and it shows Iggy is comfortable trading bars rather than hogging space. There’s a through-line to the sequencing that suits a front-to-back spin on a lazy Sunday, or a quick needle drop if you’re crate digging and need one track to justify taking home the In My Defense vinyl.

Lyrically, this is a defense in spirit more than a courtroom transcript. The chips-on-shoulder posture won’t surprise anyone who’s followed the headlines, but the writing hits harder when it drifts from score-settling to pure flex. That’s been her wheelhouse since the early mixtapes, and it still lands best when the production leans south and the BPM sits in that club-rap sweet spot. If you came for reinvention, this isn’t it. If you wanted a clean, modern reminder of what Iggy sounds like when she isn’t second-guessing, it’s here.

Reception was mixed when it dropped, with some critics taking issue with the subject matter and limited palette, while fans pushed the singles hard and got the album back on the charts. The commercial picture wasn’t a The New Classic sequel, but it did enough to re-establish her in the streaming era and give these songs a life beyond a news cycle. Sally Walker, in particular, returned her to the Hot 100 and proved that radio still has time for her once the beat is undeniable.

On wax, this material really breathes. The bass feels tighter and the highs less brittle than on a phone stream, and those piano stabs on Sally Walker get a touch of room tone that softens the edges. If you’re hunting Iggy Azalea vinyl, this one’s a fun spin, stylish cover and all, and it sits neatly next to older 12-inches without getting dwarfed sonically. We see people come into the shop asking to buy Iggy Azalea records online, but if you’re local, it’s worth grabbing in person to eyeball the pressing and jacket quality. Melbourne record store habits die hard. For those outside the city, most of the usual outlets in vinyl records Australia carry it, and the listings often bundle it with other Iggy Azalea albums on vinyl if you’re building a set.

In My Defense isn’t trying to rewrite her story. It’s trying to win the moment with loud drums, clean hooks and a few sharp guest spots, and it mostly does. Spin the singles first if you must, then let the rest hit like a late-night drive with the windows down. As a snapshot of where she landed in 2019, post-label drama and back in control, it’s solid and surprisingly replayable. And if you catch the In My Defense vinyl in the new arrivals bin, don’t overthink it. Some records are built to be played loud and often. This is one of them.