Neu Angel Haze

: Angel Haze
Based: Virginia
Listen: imangelhaze.bandcamp.com
Similar to: Erykah Badu

For anyone with even a smidgen of interest in hip-hop it must have been impossible for the staggering talent of 21-year-old rapper Angel Haze to not attract your attention. It’s very easy to see why: she is perhaps the brightest star among many artists that are combining to make 2012 such a landmark year for interesting and progressive hip-hop.

Haze has been lumbered with tediously facile comparisons proclaiming her ‘the next Nicki Minaj’ or ‘the next Azealia Banks’. These comparisons are entirely worthless: she is not the next anybody. Angel Haze is a singular brilliant rapper who stands outside from all her contemporaries.

The key thing that marks her out as unique is her background and the way that it informs her music, the best example being on this summer’s stand out ‘Reservation’ EP. Born in Michigan in 1991, the early part of Raeen Waya’s life was coloured by the overpowering nature of the cult like tendencies of organised religion, homelessness and various other ills. Her mother joined a religious sect called the Greater Apostolic Faith when she was five before she fled the group six years later leading to Haze and her brother living in constant fear of being taken into care or ending up terminally on the streets. Like many rappers now, Haze first found fame on YouTube, producing staggering videos when she was 16.

‘Reservation’s’ 14 tracks touch on a number of themes relevant to Haze’s life and there is a striking direct honesty and realism to her lyrical wordplay that make for a compelling listen, entirely different to the studied theatrics of, say, Nicki Minaj. The theme of religion appears time and time again, for example in stand out cut ‘New York’ which samples a handclap section from Gil Scott Heron’s final album and features Haze proclaiming that, “I’m Satan, and Imma take your ass to church now” before delivering the main hook with breathless chutzpah, “I run New York’. It would take a fool to argue.

There is a musical dexterity and breadth of sound to Angel Haze that marks her out as not simply a mere shock value rapper. When she cuts loose as on the breathlessly exciting “Werkin’ Girls’ she is up there with any MC but she is equally adept at creating soulful and idiosyncratic RnB in the style of say, Aaliyah and Lauryn Hill. This is a style that may possible be expanded on further as she develops.

A feature of most of ‘Reservation’s’ highlights is just how fearless Haze is. She is unafraid to deal with any subject and every single moment is characterised with a striking fierceness and an unshakable belief in her own talent. Having been signed to Universal Records in America and Island in the UK after an almighty bidding war, she is well set to become a rap superstar.

Stream Angel Haze’s ‘Werkin Girls’ video: