Interview Angel Haze: “I don’t have a single fuck in the world to give”
With ‘Back To The Woods’ out in the world, Angel Haze talks taking shrooms in the desert and doing things their way.
“If I didn’t take the time away for myself, I’d still be sort of concerned with what people think of me,” offers Angel Haze, sitting in their New York apartment, apparently cutting up clothing. Every so often, the sound of scissors sawing through material crunches down the phone line. “I don’t think there’s a bone in my body that gives a fuck about what people think about my music, or my life, or my anything,” they say. “I don’t have a single fuck in the world to give, and I think that’s cool because before I cared way too fucking much about everything.”
Just over eighteen months ago, Angel Haze found themself growing more and more frustrated with the position they’d found themself in: after completing work on a debut album, they were forced to sit and wait for its release to just be pushed back. That was, until, they took their fate into their own hands and decided to leak it themself. It was only then that their label at the time – Island and Republic Records – finally did put it out, and the rest, as they say, was history.
“I don’t count anything as a loss,” they assure. “Everything happens for a reason and I’m perfectly happy that it did, and that it happens in the way it happens. It allows for me to have such succinct creativity and a freedom that’s palpable. I could put my hand around it and strangle it, if I wanted to, or I could just keep going the way I’m going.”
Now, the Detroit-born, New York-based rapper is gearing up to release their new mixtape ‘Back To The Woods’. “It’s sort of like two different lifetimes to be honest,” they think back to last year, when the touring of ‘Dirty Gold’ was winding down. “I feel like I’ve grown a tremendous amount between even just since I put out ‘Gxmes’ and this music I’m about to release. I feel like you can think about music like a bird learning to fly; when you can touch the sky, you can pretty much do anything. The past year or so, I completely locked myself away and became a bit of a caveman hellbent on dominating the music world. My new stuff is amazing! I’m not trying to honk my own horn or whatever the phrase is - I’m usually very humble, but I can’t be now!”
When it came to the writing of their latest offering, they really did take themself away from the world. It was being alone, though, that gave them the clarity to create their boldest, bravest offering yet. “Oh man, I started writing…” Angel thinks back. “I’d got maybe over a hundred songs, and it started when I was still with my label. I started writing with a bunch of people, so I’ve got a lot of songs from my label days, and then I went and did shrooms in the desert, and I scrapped everything that I had started in the past year. I then wrote thirty or forty new tracks with my producer - TK Kayembe - and we basically locked ourselves in my apartment and didn’t see the light of day for two months. It was crazy obviously, and he had to deal with moods, but every time something happened… He’d be like, ‘I’ve got an idea’ and he’d create a beat and I’d step up to the microphone and do my thing. It would start to develop organically like that, you know?
“I think being alone with yourself teaches you, not only that you’re sane but that you’re passionate for a reason,” they continue. “I didn’t know who I was doing this for, or what I was doing or I didn’t realise that music was my calling. I started when I was young and I got thrown into a lot of uncomfortable situations that sort of made me have this disdain. The clarity that you get when you’re alone, though, there’s nothing like that. I’m gonna say it again, I’m stoked.
Taken from the September 2015 issue of DIY, out now. Angel Haze’s new mixtape ‘Back To The Woods’ is out now.
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