These are my written notes for my track review of Angel Haze's cover and version of Eminem's 2002 song "Cleaning Out My Closet" WATCH my track review for the song here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=d-qHIel5RO0

1. Cleaning Out My Closet (Eminem cover) by hip hop artist Angel Haze. This track was released on her
sixth mixtape entitled “Classick” on October 25th 2012.
Artist Background:
Angel was born in 1991 in Detroit Michigan to a military family of African and Native American
decent.
Angel was raised under the Greater Apostolic Faith, which she has often likened to "a cult."
Speaking of her religious upbringing with The Guardian, Haze said that, "We all lived in the same
community, within 10 minutes of each other. You weren't allowed to talk to anyone outside of
that, you weren't allowed to wear jewelry, listen to music, to eat certain things, to date
people...you weren't allowed to do pretty much anything.
After a pastor threatened Haze's mother, her family left the church and moved to
Brooklyn, New York when she was 15 years old
In order to pursue her hip hop career, Angel adopted the stage name Angel Haze, a combination
of both her middle name and that of porn star Jenna Haze.
In a recent interview with Complex.cm, Angel talked about her musical influences and said that
“As a kid, I didn’t go straight into hip-hop. I’ve always been really eclectic as far as my musical
choices go. So Id listen to White Stripes, My Chemical Romance, typical rock-and-roll teen type
of shit.” Some of Angel’s influences include: Jason Mraz, Train, New Radicals, Matchbox 20,
Metallica, Green Day, Toploader, Christina Aguilera, Eminem
Career Background:
Angel was featured on Dizzy Wright’s SmokeOut Conversations on the remix track “Can’t Trust
Em”. She also recorded a cover of Eminem’s 2002 song “Cleanin Out My Closet”.
In January of 2013 Haze released a pair of “diss tracks” aimed at Azealia Banks, titled "On the
Edge" & "Shut The Fuck Up".
Angel’s debut LP entitled “Dirty Gold” was released on December 30th 2013, through Island &
Republic Records
Angel has been compared to Eminem in the past because of her emotionally charged and honestly
harsh, free-flowing, almost ranting rapping style. Now Angel brings that comparison to real life with
her rendition of Eminem’s “Cleanin Out My Closet”, off of his 2002 album The Eminem Show.
Track Background:
The original version sees Eminem focusing on his dysfunctional and troubled childhood, blaming him
mother and father for the way he was brought up.
Like the original version, Angel focuses on her childhood, only slighting changing the lyrical topic to
detail a time when she was wronged and robbed of her sexual innocence at a young age.

2. Track Review
Right from the start of the track the graphic nature of the lyrics are delivered in a way that is
very direct yet simple as Angel takes the listener through the painful journey of being raped at
the age of 7 and many “millions of times “after that.
The track opens with a 10 year old Angel describing her angry metal state in which she dreamt that she
could fly and beat the Lord for causing her to go through all this pain. Angel then describes her
experiences from the beginning at the age of 7, all along describing the first time as “weird” and
mentioning her desire to tell someone about this but fearing that nobody would believe her.
Seeing no reason to tell, since nobody would believe her Angel just put up with the pain, all the while
growing increasing angry because now this person had a group of his friends involved.
One of the strongest moments is when she describes bleeding after being sodomized, suggesting that
the listener “let that feeling ring through your guts”.
The second half of the track uses simple lyrics to rely the emotional affects that these incidents had on
Angel. This is where she admits that she is fearful stating “had no idea the affect it would have on my
head”, after her attacked began getting choosy.
As well as revealing a mix of rage and rage and self-hate that left her questioning herself (with
the line “"There was a point in my life where I didn't like who I was," she raps.”So I created the other
people I would try to become.")
My Thoughts
The one thing that really stood out to her was the wordplay that Angel uses on this track to describe
every horrible moment. If you listen to her “Reservation EP” (on the tracks “Wicked Moon” and “Castle
on a Cloud”) and on her debut LP “Dirty Gold” you will see that Angel uses worldplay a lot as a way to
enhance her emotions, this track is no different as Angel describes her experiences in great emotional
detail as we see her fear and anger captured in every lyric.
Angel is a strong indivual that should be applauded for coming out and telling her painful story in this
way as a lot of victims in this case would be afraid to speak out. I believe this track will inspire other
victims to not only possibly tell their stories, but inspire them to become a stronger person then they
were before the incidents.
http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2012/10/23/angel-haze-cleaning-out-my-closet_n_2006943.html