![\"Angel-Haze](\"http:\/\/kalamu.com\/neogriot\/wp-content\/uploads\/2013\/10\/Angel-Haze-06.jpg\")
<\/a><\/p>\nAngel Haze\u2019s \u201930 Gold\u2019 Freestyles<\/span><\/h2>\n Prove She\u2019s the <\/span><\/h2>\nMost Important Rapper of\u00a02013<\/span><\/h2>\n <\/p>\n
By\u00a0Tom Hawking<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/a>![\"\"](\"http:\/\/flavorwire.files.wordpress.com\/2012\/10\/angel-haze.jpeg\" "\\"Angel")
<\/span><\/p>\n\nThere\u2019s been something quietly remarkable happening on Soundcloud over the last couple of weeks. In the lead-up to the release of her debut album\u00a0Dirty Gold<\/em>, Angel Haze has been releasing a freestyle a day, setting her coruscating raps over a series of beats borrowed from notable contemporaries: Kanye West\u2019s \u201cBlack Skinhead,\u201d Jay-Z\u2019s \u201cTom Ford,\u201d and Drake\u2019s \u201cWorst Behavior,\u201d among others. Pretty much all of the tracks she\u2019s released so far have been worth hearing, but yesterday, she delivered the best yet: a deeply personal reinterpretation of Macklemore\u2019s \u201cSame Love\u201d that discusses her own history and sexuality.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nhttps:\/\/soundcloud.com\/angelhazeym\/same-love-angel-haze<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Angel Haze\u2019s version of \u201cSame Love\u201d is the most powerful and moving rap released since\u2026 well, since she last discussed her personal history, on a harrowing reworking of Eminem\u2019s \u201cCleanin\u2019 Out My Closet\u201d last year. This new track also discusses her childhood, and specifically her mother\u2019s reaction to her sexuality (\u201cAt age 13 my mother knew I wasn\u2019t straight\/ She didn\u2019t understand but she had so much to say\/ She sat me on the couch looked me straight in my face\/ And said you\u2019ll burn in hell or probably die of AIDS\u201d), before moving to a more general examination of homophobia and prejudice.<\/span><\/p>\nIt\u2019s both honest and genuinely moving, even for an artist whose music has an entirely deserved reputation for being both of these things.\u00a0It\u2019s filled with concise lyrical insight (\u201cYou\u2019re driven by your choice is an optical illusion\/ Here\u2019s to understanding that it\u2019s not always confusion\u201d), fueled by both rage (\u201cFuck your religion\/ Fuck constitutions\/ Fuck superstitions\/ There are no lakes of fire, we\u2019re here on earth\u201d) and compassion (\u201cI stand\/ For the boy who died by his hand\/ To the sound of his father screaming, \u2018Woman loves man\u2019\u201d). On the whole, it\u00a0comes across as a very, very real version of what plastic anthems like \u201cBorn This Way\u201d or the original \u201cSame Love\u201d wish they might have been.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd, remarkably, it finishes by\u00a0borrowing some lines<\/span><\/a>\u00a0from Andrea Gibson\u2019s\u00a0poem<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u201cAndrew,\u201d lines that discuss the fluidity of sexuality and the generally pointless nature of arbitrary labels: \u201cNo, I am not gay\/ No, I am not straight\/ And I\u2019m sure as hell not bisexual, damn it\/ I am whoever I am when I am it\/ Loving whoever you are when the stars shine\/ And being whoever you be when the sun rises.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nHow many other rappers \u2014\u00a0or musicians in any genre, really \u2014\u00a0do you hear quoting from genderqueer poets? Or addressing these topics in the first place? (Or, for that matter, tweeting things like her\u00a0recent evisceration of the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>\u2018s Richard Cohen<\/span><\/a>\u00a0over his comments on Miley Cyrus?) Haze\u2019s take on gender and sexuality is so much better than Macklemore\u2019s well-meaning but kinda dim treatment of the same subject matter that there\u2019s not really even any comparison between the two, because this track isn\u2019t just better than the original \u2014 it\u2019s better than pretty much anything. And here it is, a rap most other artists would kill for, casually released on Soundcloud as part of a one-a-day series.<\/span><\/p>\nBut then, no entry in the series has been less than virtuosic. Beyond \u201cSame Love,\u201d the whole\u00a0project is serving as an ongoing demonstration that Angel Haze is quite likely the most innovative and important hip hop artist working in America at the moment. It\u2019s no accident that she\u2019s killing it over others\u2019 beats \u2014 it\u2019s something she\u2019s done her whole career, with her early mixtapes characterized by freestyles over borrowed backing tracks. It\u2019s notable that she\u2019s returned to doing so here and now, because whether it\u2019s intentional or not \u2014 and she\u2019s is precisely nobody\u2019s fool, so it\u2019s hard to imagine she isn\u2019t aware of this \u2014\u00a0the\u00a030 Gold<\/em>\u00a0series represents Haze claiming ownership of hip hop\u2019s canon.<\/span><\/p>\nRemember how the Internet went crazy over Kendrick Lamar\u2019s verse on Big Sean\u2019s \u201cControl\u201d a couple of months back, wherein he called out a bunch of rivals and proclaimed, \u201cI got love for you all but I\u2019m tryna murder you niggas\u201d? As\u00a0others pointed out yesterday<\/span><\/a>, Angel Haze hasn\u2019t been talking about doing that \u2014 over the course of her career, and\u00a0definitely\u00a0over the course of this series, she\u2019s been\u00a0doing<\/em>\u00a0it, one-upping her contemporaries over their very own beats. Taking a Jay-Z or Drake beat and doing a freestyle that shits all over their verses is essentially saying, \u201cI am better than you\u2026 and you\u2026 and you\u2026\u201d And not just saying it:\u00a0showing\u00a0<\/em>it.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd she\u2019s right. In terms of both emotional resonance and ferocious technical ability, there\u2019s no one who can rival Angel Haze at the moment \u2014\u00a0and no, I\u2019m not just talking about female rappers, because too often she\u00a0gets pigeonholed<\/span><\/a>\u00a0because of her gender. (See\u00a0this Noisey article<\/span><\/a>, for instance, which proclaims a \u201cgolden age for hip hop\u201d by lauding a bunch of inferior artists \u2014\u00a0Drake, Tyler, Chance the Rapper, Danny Brown, fucking\u00a0Riff Raff<\/em>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0while mentioning Haze precisely once, as a \u201cfemale MC.\u201d)<\/span><\/p>\nAngel Haze is better than all of them, and she\u2019s proving it every day. What she does with \u201cTom Ford,\u201d for instance, flat out puts Jay-Z\u2019s lackluster rapping to shame. So does her romp through \u201cWorst Behavior,\u201d wherein she notes that \u201cI do it for the passion\/ You do it for acknowledgement,\u201d which can\u2019t help but sound like a jab at the track\u2019s original started-from-Degrassi<\/em>\u00a0owner. Really, though, these tracks aren\u2019t about anyone else. For all that they\u2019re dismantling her rivals, what they\u2019re really proving is that she\u2019s already leaving them behind. Whether\u00a0Dirty Gold<\/em>\u00a0will live up to the premise of\u00a030 Gold<\/em>\u00a0remains to be seen \u2014 but boy, is its creator tearing shit up at the moment.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n
Most Important Rapper of\u00a02013<\/span><\/h2>\n <\/p>\n
By\u00a0Tom Hawking<\/span><\/a><\/strong><\/span><\/span> <\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/header>\n<\/a><\/span><\/p>\n\nThere\u2019s been something quietly remarkable happening on Soundcloud over the last couple of weeks. In the lead-up to the release of her debut album\u00a0Dirty Gold<\/em>, Angel Haze has been releasing a freestyle a day, setting her coruscating raps over a series of beats borrowed from notable contemporaries: Kanye West\u2019s \u201cBlack Skinhead,\u201d Jay-Z\u2019s \u201cTom Ford,\u201d and Drake\u2019s \u201cWorst Behavior,\u201d among others. Pretty much all of the tracks she\u2019s released so far have been worth hearing, but yesterday, she delivered the best yet: a deeply personal reinterpretation of Macklemore\u2019s \u201cSame Love\u201d that discusses her own history and sexuality.<\/span><\/p>\n
\nhttps:\/\/soundcloud.com\/angelhazeym\/same-love-angel-haze<\/b><\/p>\n
<\/p>\n
Angel Haze\u2019s version of \u201cSame Love\u201d is the most powerful and moving rap released since\u2026 well, since she last discussed her personal history, on a harrowing reworking of Eminem\u2019s \u201cCleanin\u2019 Out My Closet\u201d last year. This new track also discusses her childhood, and specifically her mother\u2019s reaction to her sexuality (\u201cAt age 13 my mother knew I wasn\u2019t straight\/ She didn\u2019t understand but she had so much to say\/ She sat me on the couch looked me straight in my face\/ And said you\u2019ll burn in hell or probably die of AIDS\u201d), before moving to a more general examination of homophobia and prejudice.<\/span><\/p>\nIt\u2019s both honest and genuinely moving, even for an artist whose music has an entirely deserved reputation for being both of these things.\u00a0It\u2019s filled with concise lyrical insight (\u201cYou\u2019re driven by your choice is an optical illusion\/ Here\u2019s to understanding that it\u2019s not always confusion\u201d), fueled by both rage (\u201cFuck your religion\/ Fuck constitutions\/ Fuck superstitions\/ There are no lakes of fire, we\u2019re here on earth\u201d) and compassion (\u201cI stand\/ For the boy who died by his hand\/ To the sound of his father screaming, \u2018Woman loves man\u2019\u201d). On the whole, it\u00a0comes across as a very, very real version of what plastic anthems like \u201cBorn This Way\u201d or the original \u201cSame Love\u201d wish they might have been.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd, remarkably, it finishes by\u00a0borrowing some lines<\/span><\/a>\u00a0from Andrea Gibson\u2019s\u00a0poem<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u201cAndrew,\u201d lines that discuss the fluidity of sexuality and the generally pointless nature of arbitrary labels: \u201cNo, I am not gay\/ No, I am not straight\/ And I\u2019m sure as hell not bisexual, damn it\/ I am whoever I am when I am it\/ Loving whoever you are when the stars shine\/ And being whoever you be when the sun rises.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\nHow many other rappers \u2014\u00a0or musicians in any genre, really \u2014\u00a0do you hear quoting from genderqueer poets? Or addressing these topics in the first place? (Or, for that matter, tweeting things like her\u00a0recent evisceration of the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>\u2018s Richard Cohen<\/span><\/a>\u00a0over his comments on Miley Cyrus?) Haze\u2019s take on gender and sexuality is so much better than Macklemore\u2019s well-meaning but kinda dim treatment of the same subject matter that there\u2019s not really even any comparison between the two, because this track isn\u2019t just better than the original \u2014 it\u2019s better than pretty much anything. And here it is, a rap most other artists would kill for, casually released on Soundcloud as part of a one-a-day series.<\/span><\/p>\nBut then, no entry in the series has been less than virtuosic. Beyond \u201cSame Love,\u201d the whole\u00a0project is serving as an ongoing demonstration that Angel Haze is quite likely the most innovative and important hip hop artist working in America at the moment. It\u2019s no accident that she\u2019s killing it over others\u2019 beats \u2014 it\u2019s something she\u2019s done her whole career, with her early mixtapes characterized by freestyles over borrowed backing tracks. It\u2019s notable that she\u2019s returned to doing so here and now, because whether it\u2019s intentional or not \u2014 and she\u2019s is precisely nobody\u2019s fool, so it\u2019s hard to imagine she isn\u2019t aware of this \u2014\u00a0the\u00a030 Gold<\/em>\u00a0series represents Haze claiming ownership of hip hop\u2019s canon.<\/span><\/p>\nRemember how the Internet went crazy over Kendrick Lamar\u2019s verse on Big Sean\u2019s \u201cControl\u201d a couple of months back, wherein he called out a bunch of rivals and proclaimed, \u201cI got love for you all but I\u2019m tryna murder you niggas\u201d? As\u00a0others pointed out yesterday<\/span><\/a>, Angel Haze hasn\u2019t been talking about doing that \u2014 over the course of her career, and\u00a0definitely\u00a0over the course of this series, she\u2019s been\u00a0doing<\/em>\u00a0it, one-upping her contemporaries over their very own beats. Taking a Jay-Z or Drake beat and doing a freestyle that shits all over their verses is essentially saying, \u201cI am better than you\u2026 and you\u2026 and you\u2026\u201d And not just saying it:\u00a0showing\u00a0<\/em>it.<\/span><\/p>\nAnd she\u2019s right. In terms of both emotional resonance and ferocious technical ability, there\u2019s no one who can rival Angel Haze at the moment \u2014\u00a0and no, I\u2019m not just talking about female rappers, because too often she\u00a0gets pigeonholed<\/span><\/a>\u00a0because of her gender. (See\u00a0this Noisey article<\/span><\/a>, for instance, which proclaims a \u201cgolden age for hip hop\u201d by lauding a bunch of inferior artists \u2014\u00a0Drake, Tyler, Chance the Rapper, Danny Brown, fucking\u00a0Riff Raff<\/em>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0while mentioning Haze precisely once, as a \u201cfemale MC.\u201d)<\/span><\/p>\nAngel Haze is better than all of them, and she\u2019s proving it every day. What she does with \u201cTom Ford,\u201d for instance, flat out puts Jay-Z\u2019s lackluster rapping to shame. So does her romp through \u201cWorst Behavior,\u201d wherein she notes that \u201cI do it for the passion\/ You do it for acknowledgement,\u201d which can\u2019t help but sound like a jab at the track\u2019s original started-from-Degrassi<\/em>\u00a0owner. Really, though, these tracks aren\u2019t about anyone else. For all that they\u2019re dismantling her rivals, what they\u2019re really proving is that she\u2019s already leaving them behind. Whether\u00a0Dirty Gold<\/em>\u00a0will live up to the premise of\u00a030 Gold<\/em>\u00a0remains to be seen \u2014 but boy, is its creator tearing shit up at the moment.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n
<\/span><\/p>\nThere\u2019s been something quietly remarkable happening on Soundcloud over the last couple of weeks. In the lead-up to the release of her debut album\u00a0Dirty Gold<\/em>, Angel Haze has been releasing a freestyle a day, setting her coruscating raps over a series of beats borrowed from notable contemporaries: Kanye West\u2019s \u201cBlack Skinhead,\u201d Jay-Z\u2019s \u201cTom Ford,\u201d and Drake\u2019s \u201cWorst Behavior,\u201d among others. Pretty much all of the tracks she\u2019s released so far have been worth hearing, but yesterday, she delivered the best yet: a deeply personal reinterpretation of Macklemore\u2019s \u201cSame Love\u201d that discusses her own history and sexuality.<\/span><\/p>\n <\/p>\n Angel Haze\u2019s version of \u201cSame Love\u201d is the most powerful and moving rap released since\u2026 well, since she last discussed her personal history, on a harrowing reworking of Eminem\u2019s \u201cCleanin\u2019 Out My Closet\u201d last year. This new track also discusses her childhood, and specifically her mother\u2019s reaction to her sexuality (\u201cAt age 13 my mother knew I wasn\u2019t straight\/ She didn\u2019t understand but she had so much to say\/ She sat me on the couch looked me straight in my face\/ And said you\u2019ll burn in hell or probably die of AIDS\u201d), before moving to a more general examination of homophobia and prejudice.<\/span><\/p>\n It\u2019s both honest and genuinely moving, even for an artist whose music has an entirely deserved reputation for being both of these things.\u00a0It\u2019s filled with concise lyrical insight (\u201cYou\u2019re driven by your choice is an optical illusion\/ Here\u2019s to understanding that it\u2019s not always confusion\u201d), fueled by both rage (\u201cFuck your religion\/ Fuck constitutions\/ Fuck superstitions\/ There are no lakes of fire, we\u2019re here on earth\u201d) and compassion (\u201cI stand\/ For the boy who died by his hand\/ To the sound of his father screaming, \u2018Woman loves man\u2019\u201d). On the whole, it\u00a0comes across as a very, very real version of what plastic anthems like \u201cBorn This Way\u201d or the original \u201cSame Love\u201d wish they might have been.<\/span><\/p>\n And, remarkably, it finishes by\u00a0borrowing some lines<\/span><\/a>\u00a0from Andrea Gibson\u2019s\u00a0poem<\/span><\/a>\u00a0\u201cAndrew,\u201d lines that discuss the fluidity of sexuality and the generally pointless nature of arbitrary labels: \u201cNo, I am not gay\/ No, I am not straight\/ And I\u2019m sure as hell not bisexual, damn it\/ I am whoever I am when I am it\/ Loving whoever you are when the stars shine\/ And being whoever you be when the sun rises.\u201d<\/span><\/p>\n How many other rappers \u2014\u00a0or musicians in any genre, really \u2014\u00a0do you hear quoting from genderqueer poets? Or addressing these topics in the first place? (Or, for that matter, tweeting things like her\u00a0recent evisceration of the\u00a0Washington Post<\/em>\u2018s Richard Cohen<\/span><\/a>\u00a0over his comments on Miley Cyrus?) Haze\u2019s take on gender and sexuality is so much better than Macklemore\u2019s well-meaning but kinda dim treatment of the same subject matter that there\u2019s not really even any comparison between the two, because this track isn\u2019t just better than the original \u2014 it\u2019s better than pretty much anything. And here it is, a rap most other artists would kill for, casually released on Soundcloud as part of a one-a-day series.<\/span><\/p>\n But then, no entry in the series has been less than virtuosic. Beyond \u201cSame Love,\u201d the whole\u00a0project is serving as an ongoing demonstration that Angel Haze is quite likely the most innovative and important hip hop artist working in America at the moment. It\u2019s no accident that she\u2019s killing it over others\u2019 beats \u2014 it\u2019s something she\u2019s done her whole career, with her early mixtapes characterized by freestyles over borrowed backing tracks. It\u2019s notable that she\u2019s returned to doing so here and now, because whether it\u2019s intentional or not \u2014 and she\u2019s is precisely nobody\u2019s fool, so it\u2019s hard to imagine she isn\u2019t aware of this \u2014\u00a0the\u00a030 Gold<\/em>\u00a0series represents Haze claiming ownership of hip hop\u2019s canon.<\/span><\/p>\n Remember how the Internet went crazy over Kendrick Lamar\u2019s verse on Big Sean\u2019s \u201cControl\u201d a couple of months back, wherein he called out a bunch of rivals and proclaimed, \u201cI got love for you all but I\u2019m tryna murder you niggas\u201d? As\u00a0others pointed out yesterday<\/span><\/a>, Angel Haze hasn\u2019t been talking about doing that \u2014 over the course of her career, and\u00a0definitely\u00a0over the course of this series, she\u2019s been\u00a0doing<\/em>\u00a0it, one-upping her contemporaries over their very own beats. Taking a Jay-Z or Drake beat and doing a freestyle that shits all over their verses is essentially saying, \u201cI am better than you\u2026 and you\u2026 and you\u2026\u201d And not just saying it:\u00a0showing\u00a0<\/em>it.<\/span><\/p>\n And she\u2019s right. In terms of both emotional resonance and ferocious technical ability, there\u2019s no one who can rival Angel Haze at the moment \u2014\u00a0and no, I\u2019m not just talking about female rappers, because too often she\u00a0gets pigeonholed<\/span><\/a>\u00a0because of her gender. (See\u00a0this Noisey article<\/span><\/a>, for instance, which proclaims a \u201cgolden age for hip hop\u201d by lauding a bunch of inferior artists \u2014\u00a0Drake, Tyler, Chance the Rapper, Danny Brown, fucking\u00a0Riff Raff<\/em>\u00a0\u2014\u00a0while mentioning Haze precisely once, as a \u201cfemale MC.\u201d)<\/span><\/p>\n Angel Haze is better than all of them, and she\u2019s proving it every day. What she does with \u201cTom Ford,\u201d for instance, flat out puts Jay-Z\u2019s lackluster rapping to shame. So does her romp through \u201cWorst Behavior,\u201d wherein she notes that \u201cI do it for the passion\/ You do it for acknowledgement,\u201d which can\u2019t help but sound like a jab at the track\u2019s original started-from-Degrassi<\/em>\u00a0owner. Really, though, these tracks aren\u2019t about anyone else. For all that they\u2019re dismantling her rivals, what they\u2019re really proving is that she\u2019s already leaving them behind. Whether\u00a0Dirty Gold<\/em>\u00a0will live up to the premise of\u00a030 Gold<\/em>\u00a0remains to be seen \u2014 but boy, is its creator tearing shit up at the moment.<\/span><\/p>\n<\/div>\n<\/div>\n <\/p>\n
\nhttps:\/\/soundcloud.com\/angelhazeym\/same-love-angel-haze<\/b><\/p>\n