Listening Post

Angel Haze has returned with more urgency, potency and violins on comeback track

The beginnings of the New York-based rapper's 'Resurrection'

Angel Haze grew up in a family environment where music was frowned upon. So, by in large it just wasn’t there. She only really had permission to listen to music when she was 16. It meant that upon releasing her first music in 2011, the Detroit-born New York-based 19-year-old she was still happening on something new everyday, enjoying the sense of discovery that most of us get to experience 10 years earlier. She’d talk about coming across Eminem and American soft rock as she went along. It was unpretentious, honest and engaging.

A couple of years later her excellent debut ‘Dirty Gold’ arrived, followed by 2015’s ‘Back To The Woods’. This year she’s been quiet, but it looks like a second album proper is taking shape. The first music from that is ‘Resurrection’.

It’s an intense display of Haze’s lyrical dexterity, and a reminder that she’s capable of being totally formidable.