Gig review: Angel Haze, ABC, Glasgow

Detroit-born rapper Angel Haze has been tipped as one to watch for a couple of years but she appears to be in commercial limbo following poor sales of a debut album which she leaked a few months before release.

Angel Haze performs at the Glastonbury Festival. Picture: Getty Images

Angel Haze | Rating: *** | ABC, Glasgow

Her live set-up was stripped back to hip-hop basics – just her and her DJ, who kept the attentive but subdued crowd on side until Haze arrived with her canny mantra: “the more energy you give to me, the more energy I give to you”.

This was not an especially animated performance, as she half-heartedly serenaded a couple of audience members with some silky pop R&B, but she did get the crowd howling like wolves without much persuasion, and was afforded ample space when she clambered down into the midst of a respectful moshpit.

Haze can be a fairly ferocious rapper, occasionally verging on the shouty.

She was curt and jabbering on Working Girls and strangely unsettling when double-tracked on the spooky space age Detox.

But she’s also a soulful singer, harmonising with her recorded self on The Eulogy and injecting some pathos into the yearning Back to the Woods.

Throughout the trim hour-long set, her DJ offered up the dynamic combination of sultry backing tracks souped up with heavy bass drops. This was expertly produced hip-hop with crossover potential which just about transcended its simple, almost diffident ­presentation.