Depression and mental health issues have been gaining more public attention, particularly due to a string of mass shootings in 2015. It’s also something Hip Hop hasn’t addressed as much during the last few years.
Angel Haze wants to change that as she recently penned a piece with Noisey on the subject. During the Op-Ed, the Detroit native relays that teenage depression is a major problem and often times those who are depressed don’t show it to others.
“Teenage depression is becoming an epidemic,” she wrote. “So many fans have written to me about self-harming and anorexia. Read the Twitters read the Tumblrs, see the messed up thoughts that go on in this generation. Yet at the same time, music has become relentlessly upbeat, with things like ‘We Can’t Stop’ and ‘Timber.’ It’s like going to church and watching the pastor preaching about how God is going to make your life better if you just pray to him and then going home and praying and seeing nothing happening. It feels like you’re in an environment where everyone’s going ‘yaaaaaaay’ and you feel like ‘Holy shit my life could actually change, I’m happy right now, this is great I’m gonna go home and apply this’ and nothing happens. It’s very much a social thing, you go out to clubs you have a fucking blast with your friends, then you go home and fucking hate yourself.”
Haze also drew a parallel between fame and depression and says that people knowing who you are doesn’t change the fact that one may still be struggling with internal issues.
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“A lot of people think that fame is a cure for depression,” she explained. “Everybody wants to be like the stars and half the time the stars don’t even want to be themselves, You have to look at like the drug stories, the Whitneys, all those people that are so severely unhappy that they wake up everyday depending on a substance to keep them alive. I mean I look at my friends and they’re all suffering from depression. In the past three years, three of my friends have attempted suicide.”
Angel Haze released her most recentBack to the Woods project last month. HipHopDX spoke with her at the time as she explained how it came together and why she worked exclusively with TK. Kayembe for it.
