Angel Delight

Angel Haze has spent the past month trading foul-mouthed insults with Azealia Banks, but is politeness personified when we track her down to the New York studio where she’s furiously assembling her debut album.

“Good afternoon sir, how are you?” she enquires, sounding more like Oprah Winfrey than the expletive-spitting gangstress she is. Haze – real name Raykeea Wilson – came on to the Hot Press radar for the first time last October when she included a reworking of Eminem’s ‘Cleanin’ Out My Closet’ on her Classick mixtape. With such couplets as ‘He wasn’t the first to successfully try but he did / He took me to the basement and after the lights had been cut / He whipped it out and sodomised and forced his cock through my gut’, it’s a painfully honest account of the abuse the Detroit native suffered as a preteen. Laying bare her soul like that must have been frightening.
“It scared the living shit out of me and I cried when I was making it,” she nods. “I was like, ‘God, is this going to fracture me again like it did when it happened?’ I was petrified putting it out there, but when I did I felt really empowered. It enabled me to let go of the baggage. You can’t take career steps without letting some of the things that are holding you back go.
“I didn’t how it would impact, but overnight I had messages on my Facebook saying: ‘This happened to me and, my god, somebody’s finally saying it. Thank you!’ I said, ‘Thank you!’ back because knowing I wasn’t the only one out there that this has happened to was helping me. Strength through solidarity.”
Sadly the childhood abuse didn’t end there, with Angel raised by her mother as a member of the Greater Apostolic Faith.
“They call it a church, but really it’s a cult,” she charges. “One of the numerous things you’d go straight to hell for was listening to secular music. When suddenly aged 16 I got more freedom I gorged myself. I’m still catching up – my manager’s been giving me lists of albums to listen to, which he then quizzes me on!”
What’s she currently got as homework?
“Hang on, let me get the bit of paper… The Miseducation Of Lauryn Hill, Illmatic by Nas, 2Pac’s Ready To Die and All Eyez On Me, Outkast’s Speakerboxx/The Love Below and The Fugees’ The Score. I have to get my knowledge of hip hop and every type of other music up!”
Something else Haze wasn’t able to do until relatively recently was wear anything other than dresses that covered her knees.
“I was 13 when suddenly pants were allowed, and I’ve been wearing them non-stop since,” she laughs. “I turned into such a tomboy running and playing basketball. Everything I hadn’t been able to do before I overdosed on.”
While slumping back on the couch with a beer and watching TV sports is still one of Angel’s favourite things, she’s also developed a keen interest in fashion.
“You know the New Amsterdam designer Mark McNairy?”
Er, strangely enough, no.
“I’ve been shooting his lookbook. The relationship between fashion and music is something that really interests me.”
To the point where she’d like to set up her own label?
“I can’t even draw so, no, I’ll stick to wearing the clothes! I love Mark, Helmut Lang, Givenchy, Richard Nicoll and pretty much any designer who has an edge to their work.”
It did come to my attention – well, the girlfriend’s actually – that Angel was part of the soundtrack earlier this month when JW Anderson debuted his new Mathematics Of Love menswear collection as part of London Fashion Week.
“I actually didn’t know that… wow, that makes me stoked!”
I take it that she’s as cognoscent of how Anderson, a native of Magherafelt and one of the hippest names to drop in haute couture UK circles, likes to challenge gender stereotypes as I am?
“I’ve got to be honest and say I don’t know the name,” she admits, bowing down to my superior fashion knowledge. “It’s crazy where my music’s been ending up!”
Lest we forget, the affable 21-year-old is the same person that peppered her ‘Shut The Fuck Up’ Azealia Banks diss track with lines like, ‘A bitch whose eggplant weaves and pussy are catastrophes’, ‘You ugly and you lame and your flows are recycled’ and ‘Normally I’m anti-suicide… but do or dies you weak bitch.’
The Battle of the Rappin’ A’s is something I’d like to talk to her about, but it’s been ruled offside by her record company minder. So, tell us about the album…
“I’ve been working with Malay whose my absolute favourite,” she enthuses. “I’ve been comparing every other producer to him, which isn’t really fair. Who else? Isabella from Florence + The Machine, Paul Epworth and Mark Ronson. Different types of people who get where I’m going and are here to help me.”

Angel Haze’s debut album is due out in February.