Angel Haze leaked her debut album Dirty Gold last week citing label difficulties as the problem, and now she has stepped forward to clarify the situation.
The rapper posted a five-minute video detailing her reasons for going against her label’s wishes, and explains her frustration, assuring that Dirty Gold has been sitting complete for “seven months” and that she “didn’t wanna release the album” but “had to set an example.”
She’s pretty damning to her labels Island and Republic, even though she didn’t name them, revealing that she felt as if they were telling her “I wanna support your dreams, but I’m also gonna fuck with them,” and stating pretty decisively “I sort of had to change the direction of shit or I was gonna go fucking mad.”
The reason for the outrage is seemingly because Haze feels as if she’s not being allowed to connect with her fans, stating that she intends “to be a voice for the voiceless” and she wants her music to actually help listeners, just as music helped her growing up. This obviously comes at the expense of sales, but she doesn’t “give a fuck about marketability” or “going Platinum.”
She eventually comes to the same realization that plenty of Bandcamp users have known for a while: “literally the only way to get it out faster was to put it out myself.” You can take a look at the entire video below.
Dirty Gold will be released on Island/Republic on December 30.
