- Critic score
- Publication
- By date
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Jan 9, 2014Dirty Gold feels like a statement, an arrival.
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Entertainment WeeklyJan 10, 2014When she's in her comfort zone, Haze proves she's worth the hype. [17 Jan 2014, p.67]
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Jan 13, 2014Haze proves that she can write, rap and sing really well.
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Jan 8, 2014It'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.
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Feb 5, 2014Dirty Gold is certainly a flawed debut, and yet it's not what's inside that's flawed, it's just the container's inability to hold such OCD-ish genius.
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UncutFeb 3, 2014Her weakness is the occasional lapse into 12-step blandness on the big--and rather underwritten--choruses. [Mar 2014, p.69]
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Jan 21, 2014All in all, Dirty Gold is a solid first major-label album, one that is graced with several moments of brilliance.
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Jan 8, 2014Dirty 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.
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Jan 23, 2014She's played it safe, probably on her label's whim, when really, perilous rule-breakers would have been better suited to her lyrical style.
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MojoFeb 11, 2014Haze's impetuosity may've harmed Dirty Gold's commercial prospects, but the purity of her intent speaks volumes. [Mar 2014, p.94]
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Jan 8, 2014It’s not a bad record by any stretch, albeit one where the turgid does bump ugly against the terrific.
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Jan 17, 2014Haze and her production team have creative ideas and the means to realise them on record. They simply distract themselves trying to turn a rapper into a pop star.
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Mar 5, 2014She's going for Nicki Minaj meets Eminem meets Rihanna on the Tyra show. It feels like a major missed opportunity.
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Jan 30, 2014[Angel Haze is] disappointing, misguided, flaccid.
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Jan 8, 2014A 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.
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Jan 8, 2014Haze'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.
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Feb 4, 2014The production on Dirty Gold--generic, consistently uninspired, gauche--bears absolutely no relation to the album’s subject matter, and jars horribly with Haze’s dark forceful flow.
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Jan 10, 2014Dirty Gold‘s shortcomings overshadow the shining moments on the album as Haze struggles to find her identity, somewhere between underground rebel and mainstream player.
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Jan 9, 2014Haze is positioning herself as a top 40 infiltrator, which is fine, but she’s also diluted her uniqueness.
User score distribution:
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Positive: 25 out of 35
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Mixed: 7 out of 35
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Negative: 3 out of 35
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Jan 15, 2014
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Jan 9, 2014
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Jan 19, 2014