Good Or Shit: Angel Haze And Pop Apologetics

Angel Haze touched me.

Alas, no, I was not the self-proclaimed pan-sexual's one-night lover. I was just a fan trying to watch her perform in London the other week and unable to see shit because I'm short. There I was, trapped in a middle-of-the-crowd position, staring at a bunch of tall people's shoulder blades and grumbling to myself about not being able to see anything but shoulder blades, when the crowd parted and before I could work out why, she was standing in front me, rapping to my face.

It was such a thrill. As a friend of mine noted, you felt like you were just hanging out in somebody's living room, that's how intimate she made an already intimate gig. At times so very hip hop, at others, so rock it was like she was challenging Rage Against the Machine. The third time she came off stage and onto our level was to New York – a song that samples and loops the clapping from Gil Scott Heron's New York is Killing Me – which went off. And as she walked past me, she slipped her arm around my waist...

I'm a big fan of the 22 year-old rapper and have been since my close friend and ex-long-term-boyfriend introduced me to her music at the beginning of the year, leading me to download her free LP Reservation. It's been a long time since I've enjoyed the work of a female hip hop artist this much. I'm a huge Jean Grae fan and I just haven't found that many women in hip hop who match her intelligence, raw honesty and emotion, coupled with beats and melodies that reveal interesting and diverse musical interests and tastes. These are the kinds of female artists I respect. To me, they seem real.

Does this mean that artists like Azealia Banks, Iggy Azalea, Ke$ha or Nicki Minaj, should go away and cease making music until they learn how to say something interesting?

There's a lot of stuff being said recently about the vacuous nature of pop, commercial music, and that whole industry – fallout from the Miley Cyrus saga. I've heard everything from claims that this industry is engaged in all kinds of nefarious activities revolving around mind control to claims that pop music is just one level of earth above the root of all evil. And I just want to say – I like pop music. Now don't stone me all ye listeners of only the most deep, meaningful, message ridden, boundary pushing, Avant Garde, emotionally revelatory, alternative sounding, conscious, searing-indictment-of-our-times-railing music. I love a lot of that stuff too. But sometimes, I just want to sing along to a simple verse-chorus tune with a nice melody about being in love, or something. I don't think all pop music is controlling my mind, or deadening my social conscience, or causing me to lose interest in anything other than how badly I need new clothes that I don't really need.

I see it like the Ancient Greeks saw drama, which came about at roughly the same time as democracy. At the great Athenian Dionysia – a huge drama festival – there were three genres of plays presented – comedy, tragedy and satyr (not satire, satyr). The first two questioned and challenged the social, political and human condition issues of the day. They moved people to tears, made people angry, provoked thought, had something important to say. But the third genre – satyr – so named for the companions of Pan, who in mythology had big penises and loved to get drunk and have sex – were lewd, crude, brazen displays of cheek. They provided light entertainment. They offered audiences a little bit of relief from all the “serious issues”.  And the people loved them, because even the most thinking and feeling person needs a bit of bloody relief.

I love Jill Scott and Erykah Badu, but I also love watching Ciara clips and dancing to Whitney Houston's I Wanna' Dance with Somebody. I love Nick Cave, Leonard Cohen and Immortal Technique, and I also love Rihanna's Diamonds in the Sky, which was written by Sia Furler. Sia is my favourite pop musician. In an interview once, she very appropriately referred to her songs as “weepies” and man do I love having a good weep to Breathe Me.

After the show, when she was just chilling with the plebs in the bar, I told Angel Haze that she is the first female rap artist whose music I have truly enjoyed since I got into Jean Grae all those years ago. She beamed and told me it meant a lot to her, “because Jean Grae is the shit”. Haze's upcoming album Dirty Gold is due for release some time next year. I expect it will be no less intelligent and no less raw than Reservation. I'm very excited to hear that she worked with Sia on this album, a collaboration she told Billboard was the “biggest highlight” for her. “She's one of my all time favourite artists ever,” she said.  “That was amazing for me. Like, legitimately."