Dirty Gold

Background

In July 2012, Angel Haze released their EP, titled Reservation for free online. It was met with critical acclaim, receiving a 88/100 score at Metacritic. On the same year, they took part in the BET Hip Hop Awards' Cypher. They were also featured on Funk Volume artist Dizzy Wright's mixtape Free SmokeOut Conversations, on the remixed track for "Can't Trust Em". On their 2012 mixtape Classick, Haze recorded a cover of Eminem’s 2002 song, "Cleanin' Out My Closet". Earbuddy's John Downey wrote, "Haze’s take on Slim Shady’s classic tune might be the superior product." It was announced that Universal Republic Records was going defunct, making artists including Haze to move from its roster to the revived Republic Records.

Release and promotion

In May 2013, Haze debuted a track that was not included in their debut album Dirty Gold, titled "No Bueno", at a performance in London. On June 2, 2013, the song was released as the first promotional single. On December 18, 2013, Haze leaked their album in its entirety on her SoundCloud page. The leak happened following a dispute with her record label which Haze wrote about in a series of tweets expressing their outrage. Executives for the record company told Haze that if they finished recording her album before the summer, they would release Dirty Gold in 2013. It was scheduled for a January 2014 release, but was later pushed back to March 3, 2014.

Hours after they leaked their album without the approval of the label, who had allegedly taken it down soon after the songs had spread across the Internet, Angel Haze stated on Twitter that after talking with the executives, they agreed to release Dirty Gold on December 30, 2013 in the United States and the United Kingdom. The album debuted on the UK Albums Chart (5 January 2014) at number 196. The record company also confirmed it was starting work towards a physical release of the album, which was scheduled for release in early in 2014 as it could not be manufactured by the end of December 2013.

Singles

On August 27, 2013, the album's lead single, titled "Echelon (It's My Way)", premiered on Zane Lowe's BBC Radio 1 show. On October 2, 2013, its music video premiered on Angel Haze's VEVO. The Markus Dravs-produced song was made available for purchase on October 15, 2013.

On January 9, 2014, "Battle Cry" featuring Sia, was serviced to urban contemporary radio in the United Kingdom as the album's second single.

Critical reception

Dirty Gold received generally positive reviews from music critics. At Metacritic, assigns a normalized rating out of 100 to reviews from mainstream critics, the album received a 66 score based on 19 reviews. Rowan Savage of Tiny Mix Tapes gave the album four and a half stars out of five, saying "Dirty Gold feels like a statement, an arrival." In a mixed review, Spin gave the album a five out of ten, saying "Haze's attempt to appear undefinable and resist categorization (as Dirty Gold's conversational interludes attest) is a laudable pursuit, but it leaves the record unfocused." In a more negative review, Kevin Ritchie of Now gave the album two out of five stars, saying "Haze is positioning herself as a top 40 infiltrator, which is fine, but she’s also diluted her uniqueness." Alexis Petridis of The Guardian gave the album four out of five stars, saying "It's a flawed debut, but it's also a brave and individual one: its best bits are flatly great, its attempt to harness pop-rap to serious topics is a pretty intrepid move."

Evan Rytlewski of The A.V. Club gave the album a C, saying "A labored crossover grab that mistakes conviction for substance, Dirty Gold marks Haze as just the latest in a long line of promising mixtape rappers to whiff a major-label debut." Eric Diep of XXL gave the album an M, saying "But Dirty Gold's shortcomings overshadow the shining moments on the album as Haze struggles to find her identity, somewhere between underground rebel and mainstream player."

Mike Madden of Consequence of Sound gave the album a C+, saying "Dirty Gold is plenty inviting, sonically speaking, with patches of rock, EDM, and pop. It's problematic, however, that the album zones in on those genres with about as much specificity as those designators have."

Commercial performance

In the United States, the album debuted at number 15 on the Billboard Heatseekers Albums chart in its first week of release, failing to appear on the Billboard 200. It sold fewer than 1,000 copies in the United States in its first week. In the UK, it debuted at number 196 on the UK Album Charts, selling 857 copies. The album debuted at number 22 on the UK R&B Albums.

Track listing