Australian rapper Iggy Azalea released her debut album The New Classic earlier this year. It peaked at number 5 here in the UK and landed at number 3 on the Billboard 200 in the US. The album spawned 5 hit singles including the massive Fancy featuring Charli XCX, which gave Iggy her first number 1 on the Billboard Hot 100. Here in the UK the song peaked at number 5 giving her the biggest hit of her career to date. 7 months after its release, Iggy is remixing her album with the release of Reclassified.
Reclassified features 5 brand new tracks and 7 tracks from The New Classic. All of the hit singles are here – Work, Bounce, Change Your Life featuring T.I., Fancy featuring Charli XCX, and Black Widow featuring Rita Ora – alongside the project’s lead single Beg For It feat MO. Reclassified opens with the shimmering 90s hip-hop rhythms of We In This Bitch where Iggy reflects on what a world without her would look like whilst sharing her ambitions for her career. It’s a confident yet honest opener for the album and definitely draws you in.
Of the other new tracks on the album Beg For It feat MO is one of the highlights and it’s not hard to see why it was chosen as a single. The sparse rhythms and sing-a-long chorus keeps Iggy in the same lane as her hit Fancy. Elsewhere Jennifer Hudson lends her big voice to the breezy Trouble which has a soul throwback feel, Ellie Goulding stops by for the feisty Heavy Crown, and Iggy SZN shows the harder side of Iggy’s abilities with squelchy beats backing her rhymes.
The new tracks sit well alongside the 7 tracks from The New Classic and the album feels more cohesive and confident than the original release. Reclassified neatly straddles the mainstream whilst still leaving glimpses of the harder hip-hop sound that we’ve heard from Iggy previously.
Reclassified is a release that is sure to divide fans. On the one side it’s better than the usual reissues where an artist adds just one or two songs, but for those who bought the original album they may feel a bit cheated. It’s clear that since Iggy broke through with Fancy she’s realised that collaborations and a more mainstream sound is going to work for her. With the exception of Iggy SZN all of the new songs here are aiming straight for the charts and that’s no bad thing.
