Angel Haze has taken to her official YouTube page to clear the air regarding the recent leak of her debut full-length release, Dirty Gold, which the artist released via SoundCloud, months ahead of its official release date, last week. The leak saw the album’s release pushed forward three months.
“Since they don’t want to put it out this year, I will. Here’s the album. HERE IS DIRTY GOLD. I hope you all enjoy it,” wrote the young rapper on her Twitter account when the album first leaked, citing frustrations with her label that saw her “sleepless and starved crying” as motivating the release.
In the new five-minute video blog addressed to her fans, Haze explains that she “didn’t wanna release the album,” which had been sitting completed for “seven months,” but felt that she “had to set an example” to the label, in addition to the mounting stress of sitting on unreleased work.
“I’ve been so desperate for you guys to hear the new music because I went in and I worked my ass off. I said on Twitter, about a year ago, that I wanted to be the best version of myself and I also wanted to be…the best for everyone else and I took that shit seriously,” she says in the video.
Haze says that while she accepts the benefits of releasing an album through the ‘proper’ channels, she felt she was being told by her labels, Island and Republic, whom the rapper doesn’t mention by name, “I wanna support your dreams, but I’m also gonna fuck with them.”
“I sort of had to change the direction of shit or I was gonna go fucking mad,” she adds, explaining that while she spent time “doing things that [she] thought would help get [the album] out faster,” self-releasing the album was the only guaranteed way to see the music reach fans sooner.
Haze ends the message by insisting that the move was made with her fans in mind, adding that she intends to be “a voice for the voiceless” and a figure of guidance for her fans, regardless of the impact on sales, saying she doesn’t “give a fuck about marketability” or “going Platinum.”
Watch: Angel Haze Explains Dirty Gold Leak
http://youtu.be/e10pzjb4ZnU
