Angel Haze Details Her 'Huge' Future, Debuts 'Werkin' Girls' Video

Posted on Oct 11th 2012 11:15AM by Shauna Farnell
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Adrienne Nicole

Angel Haze, the 21-year-old rapper from Michigan, has scarcely been in New York City for eight months and she's already talking about running the place. She recently inked a record deal with Universal Republic and is collaborating with some big names on her upcoming big label releases.

But it's not as if she just rolled into NYC and decided she wanted to make it as an artist. She began writing lyrics and poetry at 10 years old. Moving to NYC was just a necessary step in making it happen -- both in landing a vessel with which to impart her music and also to simply come out of her shell.

"I felt it was time and wanted to devote myself to my music fully," she says. "New York City made me a lot less introverted and shy. It made me more obnoxious and a lot more in your face."

Haze admits that this reality is starkly apparent in her track, "New York," for which she recently made a video featuring plenty of bodies and gas masks and in which she repeatedly declares "I run New York." She also uses the track as an opportunity to state, "I'm a nasty nigga, like Nas like Kim, like Cassie bitches ..." but when asked to name artists she has admired or found inspiring, none of these names emerge.

Watch "New York"

For inspiring artists, she says, "I don't have many. None I can actually think of at the moment."

Unlike some female rappers, Haze isn't openly picking fights with or personally insulting the others, but she isn't shy about touting herself as being better than the rest. This summer, she went to London to do some recording with Rudimental (an experience she describes as "wicked awesome") and allegedly has something in the works with Azealia Banks, one of many artists to whom she has been compared. When asked how she feels about this or any other comparison, she says, "I don't think anything of it."

"Nicki Minaj started off being compared to Lil Kim and others before her until she made a name and a lane of her own. It's natural," she says.

One thing's certain. Haze is on a faster track -- both intellectually and artistically -- than the average 21-year-old. It could have something to do with her old soul.

"I've always just thought I was born into the wrong time for the right reason," she says.

When asked how her songs now compare to poems she wrote as a child, she says they are similar in that "they are emotional." Her first EP, Reservation, released for free on the internet this summer is the first of her musical endeavors that she describes as "all mine." Regarding the evolution of her music, she says "it's really just gotten better in my opinion."

As far as where she's headed, Haze's vision of her future is not hazy whatsoever.

"I see myself becoming as huge as I've always desired to be."

Although she claims to find no inspiration in other artists, she says inspiration is her only hope for what listeners get out of her own music. Life and experience alone are what inspires her songwriting.

"I feel like experience just seeps through the pores in your face, like even if I didn't want to write it, it'd fall all over the paper and eventually write itself," she says. "That's how it usually happens."

Watch "Werkin' Girls"