It was released independently on 19 July 2019, by Azalea's label Bad Dreams Records and Empire Distribution serving as the follow-up to The New Classic (2014).

[3] The album contains features from Lil Yachty, Kash Doll, Juicy J, and Iggy's protégée Stini, with production including J.

White Did It, who executive produced the album with handling production on majority of its tracks, as well as with Smash David, Go Grizzly and Rico Beats.

In early 2016, Azalea released "Team",[4] the intended lead single from her second studio album, then titled Digital Distortion.

In late 2017, Azalea announced that the album had been shelved completely because of her ex-fiancé basketball player Nick Young cheating on her[5][6] and she was working on a new record.

[25] AllMusic's Neil Z. Yeung said that on the album Azalea "continues bragging, boasting, and fronting without any depth or sounding pleasure".

[18] In a negative review, Pitchfork's Dani Blum wrote "The album is stacked with cartoonish approximations of what she thinks a rap song should sound like: shivers of bass, the occasional 'skrrrt,' Mad Libs of designer brands and bodily fluids.

He praised "Sally Walker" as the best song on the album, while "Freak of the Week" was described as "a rejected track by Megan Thee Stallion".

[22] Siena Yates of New Zealand Herald said that the album "half these songs feature a good 30 seconds of Iggy just repeating the title over and over, and none of them particularly stand out".

"[21] Craig Jenkins of Vulture stated "In My Defense is a funny follow-up to the frustrations of the Digital Distortion era because the title and cover art are ruses...

[24] In the US, In My Defense debuted at number 50 on the US Billboard 200 with 11,261 album-equivalent units, including 5,779 pure album sales and a streaming count of 6.67 million.