“The media [said], ‘Either you like Banks or Iggy,’ so labels were like, ‘There can only be one rapper with a vagina,’ ” explains Azalea, who says she found out the Interscope deal was dead through the press. “You go on MTV — ‘Iggy got dropped’ — that’s how you hear. Then you call the [label] and nobody picks up their phone. You may as well be f-ing dead.”
Azalea set her sights on the United Kingdom, inking a deal with Mercury there at the top of 2013. “I signed to Mercury because no one would take me over here,” she says. “Rappers like Angel Haze or Dominique Young Unique are on the radio in the U.K. — I can only hear one female rapping on the radio here.”
Azalea landed four songs on the Official Charts Co.’s U.K. Singles chart and finally worked out a worldwide deal with Def Jam, another Universal Music Group label, in April before finishing The New Classic (Virgin/EMI will release the album in the United Kingdom). Throughout the album, she delivers staccatos in a sassy, Southern-accented tenor; the production follows suit, paying homage to Atlanta bounce while looking to the future with EDM leanings. “100s” features an interpolation of KP & Envyi’s 1998 classic “Swing My Way,” while “Goddess” has a pared-down steel-drum beat reminiscent of the coldly minimal beats popular in the U.K. grime scene. Azalea even sings a couple of hooks, buoying a theme of reinvention, of overcoming skeptics.