Iggy Azalea has claimed the reason she cancelled her Great Escape arena tour was because she needed a mental break. In a statement given to Seventeen Magazine, the Australian rapper said she also needed to focus on a new creative direction.
“I’ve had a different creative change of heart,” said Azalea of her decision to cancel the tour dates for the second time.
“I want to start totally anew, and if I stayed on my tour, that would mean I wouldn’t even be able to start working on that until after Christmas.”
She added: “On top of that, mentally, to be honest with you, I just feel I deserve a break. I’ve been going non-stop for the past two years, nearly every single day. I’m not in a bad place. I think sometimes when you say you need a mental break, people are like, ‘A mental break? Be sure you don’t have a breakdown because you’re sad.’”
Azalea had originally been due to play the series of North American arena dates in April, but in March she postponed them until September. The tour will now be replaced by live shows next year, promoting a new album, although no firm details of either are confirmed.
Elsewhere in her statement, Azalea described her job as “very emotionally draining” and cited a need to “just enjoy what I worked so hard for”.
She said: “It can kind of wear on you, too, when you’ve been doing the same material for a really long time. Even though a lot of people just discovered it, I am a musician and a creative person and I want to be able to perform new stuff and do new things. I feel like I’m at the end of an era now. To go on a tour in late September and to stay in that mindset of what I’d envisioned for that tour, I feel like that would stifle me.”
Azalea is currently working on the follow-up to her 2014 debut album The New Classic.
