Available on: Altered Ego mixtape

FACT’s Alex Macpherson wrote an excellent piece about hip-hop and homophobia for The Guardian this week, centered around Tyler, the Creator’s obsession with the other F-word and the latest step in Lil B’s odd-ball quest to blur boundaries and gender lines as much as possible, titling his new album I’m Gay.

The piece went on to use the fact that this particular culture war is being fought by straight men as a means to introduce Angel Haze, a bisexual female rapper (as opposed to Nicki Minaj, who seems to pick and choose her sexual preference the same way she does her wigs) based in California, but of Native American descent. She’s released two mixtapes to date – the content, as you might expect, can be scrappy, with the odd bad choice of backing track (not to mention the occasional curveball, such as classic grime instrumental ‘Rhythm & Gash’), but when the backing’s gaseous enough to suit Haze’s 4am love raps, she really excels.

Her vocal of Jamie Foxx and Drake’s ‘Fall for your Type’ is the best of these: there’s no chorus, just Haze getting more stirred up with each line, dropping declarations of love and life lessons like landslides from some holy plane. Haze might refer to herself as a “product of good weed and great diction”, but she’s devastatingly sober here, looking you dead in the eye with each line.

Elon Gats