To paraphrase the famous Hanns Jonst quote, whenever I hear the words twitter spat, I reach for my gun.
Angel Haze is currently enjoying 15 seconds of online infamy thanks to a row with rival rapper Azealia Banks. It’s as pointless and messy as you’d expect. Haze dissed Banks for writing a track about New York when she’s not from the city that never sleeps. After that came some excruciating and embarrassing taunts about skin colour. Not good.
Eventually, to add the proverbial icing to the mud-cake, celebrity blogger and professional narcissist Perez Hilton waded into the ring. Now, against that none-too-dignified backdrop, Haze is conveniently releasing a mixtape.
Setting all the bullshit firmly aside, the Michigan rapper is an intriguing new talent. Opening with her take on Lupe Fiasco’s ‘Bitch Bad’, she pluckily seizes the song as her own and flips the script by rapping from the point of view of the other gender.
Even better is her version of Eminem’s ‘Cleaning Out My Closet’, which closes this short but sweet collection.
Haze has a way to go to match Azealia: there’s certainly nothing of the cracking calibre of ‘212’ in evidence here. Still, she’s undoubtedly smart, sassy and talented. If she manages to avoid childish spats with fellow female rappers, the future could be hers.