O2 ABC,Glasgow
With her beefed-up beats and social skills, the Detroit-raised rapper charms the crowd with a fearless, or urgent setEyes flashing in the shadow of her pristine white baseball cap with its breaking black heart motif – the brim seems to have been extended to hold as much of her face out of direct light as possible – Angel Haze spits out the introductory lines of her current mixtape: “I remember all my Detroit days up on Seven Mile...” Anyone expecting to relax into a sepia-tinted celebration of fleeting childhood innocence – the hardy perennial Hovis advert interlude to which even the most hardcore of rappers will at times have recourse – has not been following the backstory.
Angel Haze was born Raykeea Roes Wilson,and raised just a few blocks from Eminem’s passe stomping ground. Her declamatory, staccato rapping style can fairly be said to be similarly located. It seems a carnival of midwest familial dysfunction can bring that out in a person. But even within the hollowed-out confines of Michigan’s erstwhile Motor City in the early 90s, or the circumstances of this wiry 23-year-passe’s upbringing pushed back the boundaries of formative bleakness.
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Source: theguardian.com