Angel Haze: The rapper raised in a cult where music was banned
All hail Angel Haze.
Coming out of Detroit, Michigan, in 2009, the then-teenage Raykeea Raeen-Roes Wilson made a name for themself with a string of absolutely blinding mixtapes. They may have been all of 20 years old when their debut mixtape King dropped in 2011, but the sheer artistic vision on offer spoke to someone with a much more mature head on their shoulders. Singles like ‘New York‘, ‘Hot Like Fire’ and especially the swaggering banger ‘Werkin’ Girls’ showed this was a capital-R rapper with talent and vision to spare.
Then, they dropped two absolutely staggering freestyles that didn’t just rework two of the biggest rap hits of the past decade, but also the way that everyone regarded them and just what their voice actually represented.
The first was Macklemore, Ryan Lewis and Mary Lambert’s cringey, yet sincere anthem of ally-ship, ‘Same Love’. Haze, who goes under the name ROES today, flipped the song entirely on its head. Rapping from the perspective of an actual queer person, someone who had actually suffered from horrific homophobic abuse, rather than someone who was called gay in third grade, and I quote, “Because I could draw”.
The second was an even more intense, harrowing freestyle over Eminem’s ‘Cleaning Out My Closet’, detailing the sexual assault that they’d suffered at the hands of people who they’d trusted as a child. To this day, Haze’s version of Eminem’s screed about his mummy issues is not the kind of listen that anyone gets through many times, yet it’s necessary. These two freestyles completely changed the way people viewed Angel Haze, yet the truth is that they’d never been shy about their upbringing. This was just a way of exorcising the demons it had left them with.
What caused Angel Haze so much pain?
Haze never knew their father. Born to a military family, their father died from a gunshot wound shortly before they were born, leaving their mother to raise them on her own. When Haze was very young, their mother struck up a friendship with a pastor. One who represented the Pentecostal Greater Apostolic Faith. Haze and their mother were in dire straits in just about every way they could be, so when this pastor offered his home to them, they accepted. It’s an understandable decision, but one that led to unimaginable hardship.
In an interview with The Guardian in 2013, Haze freely referred to the church as a cult. Saying that their every move was monitored and the slightest sign you weren’t following their dogma was punished.
They said, “We all lived in the same community, within ten minutes of each other. You weren’t allowed to talk to anyone outside of that, you weren’t allowed to wear jewellery, listen to music, to eat certain things, to date people … you weren’t allowed to do pretty much anything. Church was on Sundays, Wednesdays and Fridays. When they did revivals it was everyday. I used to just crawl under the bench and try to sleep.”
Eventually, Haze and their mother finally broke away from the cult because a pastor threatened their mother with violence. This saw them settle in New York, pour their trauma into poetry at first, then hip-hop music shortly afterwards. In doing so, they became an icon not just because of their sheer virtuosity, but because of just how many people saw their own trauma reflected in theirs.