Iggy Azalea’s Debut Performance On ‘Saturday Night Live’: Review Revue

Bianca Gracie | October 27, 2014 11:07 am

Over the weekend, Iggy Azalea made her debut on the Jim Carrey-hosted Saturday Night Live. The diva took to the legendary stage to perform her current hits: a medley of “Fancy” and the Rita Ora-assisted “Black Widow,” and “Beg For It” — her latest song with Danish singer .

Azalea held her own with confidence and ease, but it was MØ’s feature that had everyone talking — but not in a good way. In our recap of the night’s performance, we wrote: “…Iggy returned to the stage for the live introduction of her catchy, very “Fancy”-sounding follow-up “Beg For It”, joined toward the end by MØ, who…well, seemed to experience some technical difficulties.” MØ has since apologized on Twitter.

Did other critics enjoy the rapper’s performance? Find out after the jump!

:: Jezebel thought Azalea fell to the show’s curse: “With her performance on SNL‘s Halloween episode over the weekend, she too was sucked into the quagmire of crappy sound and weird syncing—two technical foibles which were complicated by crappy rapping and weird singing. Acoustics aside, Iggy Azalea’s performance wasn’t doing any favors for the Australian rapper’s reputation, wherein she is pop-worshipped (see: charts) but, generally, hip-hop-reviled.”

:: Entertainment Weekly may be a new fan: “Yes, I listened to “Fancy” a few dozen times this summer like we all did, but she hasn’t been in regular rotation in my Spotify otherwise. That being said, her ‘Fancy’ and ‘Black Widow’ medley (are two songs enough for a medley?) with Rita Ora was a solid performance, especially when Ora appeared for the second half.”

:: While HitFix threw subtle shade: “…but her new track ‘Beg For It’ was hardly ready for primetime, or nighttime, or just about any time at all, particularly when it came to featured singer MØ. Azalea also took on a medley that included her ‘Fancy’ and ‘Black Widow’ (with Rita Ora), causing many of the show’s fans to take to social media crying out to lip sync city.”

:: A.V. Club‘s review did the same: Having never heard her before, I’m gonna go ahead and call ‘Jenna Maroney’ on her performances tonight—two ludicrously ‘sexualized’ numbers whose elaborate, overdramatic choreography (miraculously) doesn’t affect the Australian rapper’s ability to produce studio-quality vocals. I don’t know who takes this person seriously, but at least Ms. Azalea brought her own length of chain link fence to writhe against.”

:: Hollywood Life was one of the few to defend MØ…kind of: “In her performance, she seems to be singing not only slower than the single but slower than the back-up singers, who are having trouble keeping up with her inconsistent pace. Maybe they didn’t give themselves enough time to rehearse, or maybe MØ simply made some bad choices when it came to perform the song live. However, we don’t think that lip-syncing is at work. Let’s be real — wouldn’t the vocals sound way better if there was lip-syncing?”

:: Paste Magazine was no better: “And… no offense Iggy Azalea, but seeing you perform live adds nothing to the limp, ambient club noise quality of your music. Honestly, if we wanted to watch sullen teenagers sexy-dance we could attend a local prom. (Happily, Lorne Michaels has booked Prince as next week’s musical guest!)”

:: Finally, Direct Lyrics had this to say: “Now what the hell happened to MØ? I had already embraced the idea she had suffered technical problems – because she just sounded a MESS during her chorus parts – but Iggy’s after-show comments on Instagram kind of say it was MØ’s own blame due to nerves.”

What do you think of Iggy Azalea’s debut on SNL? Sound off in the comments below!