Ben Haggerty steps carefully. The 32-year-old rapper and his musical partner, Ryan Lewis, handle their business with caution. For a few years now, the pair have been preparing the follow-up to their 2012 smash album, The Heist, and expectations are high.
The Heist was controversial for a number of reasons. The platinum-selling album won four Grammy awards, including Best Rap Album. Most people, including Macklemore himself, felt Kendrick Lamar should have won that year for Good Kid m.A.A.d City. An awkward conversation resulted, in which Macklemore texted Lamar that “you should have [won].” He then published that text on Instagram, then apologized to Lamar on Hot 97 for publishing the text. The exchange was well-intentioned, but a bit squirm-inducing.
That apology is, in some ways, representative of Macklemore’s career. On 2005’s The Language of My World, he confessed in “White Privilege” that “I feel like I pay dues, but I’ll always be a white MC. I give everything I have when I write a rhyme, but that doesn’t change the fact that this culture’s not mine.”
Perhaps more than any white rapper before him, Macklemore uses his lyrics to tackle his whiteness – and his cultural gentrification. One of the new album’s three advance singles, “White Privilege II”, finds him addressing Black Lives Matter, asking himself, “You speak about equality, but do you really mean it? Are you marching for freedom, or when it’s convenient?”
It’s a graceful but contorted stance Macklemore takes. He acknowledges that more people listen to him because he’s white. And he recognizes that people of color have confronted these issues for hundreds of years. There’s nothing new here. But as a straight white dude speaking to a large audience of straight white dudes, he feels a responsibility to wake up otherwise sleepy or complacent fans.
This week, Macklemore and Lewis released This Unruly Mess I’ve Made, the new full-length. Much of it, following in the path of “Thrift Shop”, takes on lighter topics: mopeds (“Downtown”), graffiti (“Buckshot”), and dance battles (“Dance Off”). In his corniest moment, he pens an ode to junk food (“Let’s Eat”).
Self-deprecating even when enjoying his new found super stardom, he compares himself to Brad Pitt’s ugly cousin – that is, when you’re drunk at the wedding, miss, you’d still fuck him: “You’re embarrassed huh? I’m in Paris, bruh. You brought your whole crew. I’m with my parents, bruh…”
Germany, they heard of me. Japan, they heard of me.
It’s a murder scene, you gon’ learn some things.
My dick named Ron Burgundy.
I’m bad news with a pan flute.
Elsewhere, the subject matter is heavier. “Kevin” is a look at suicide and prescription pill addictions. “St. Ides” finds him thinking about his new baby daughter (Sloane) while looking at how Seattle has changed:
Overpopulated but can seem like a ghost town
Keep a couple real ones with me when it goes down
Lack of diversity, I think about Sloane now
Only reason I would ever leave my hometown
If I still drink I would crack a 40 ounce
Parents finally left, moved away, and the sold the house
The most powerful moment on the album, though, is its opening scene. Macklemore walks us through his experience of the 2013 Grammy Awards on “Light Tunnels”, and as he showed with that Kendrick Lamar conversation at the time, he’s conflicted. He’s proud of the accolades, but feels like his whiteness got him there. He feels like an impostor, like a gentrifying hipster ruining the neighborhood by moving into it.
This feels so narcissistic, dressed as a celebration to conceal it’s a business
Me, me, me, my, my image, my, my songs, my self-interest
One big reality show that is scripted
And I can keep trying or get off the competition
It’s hand-wringing. He loves hip hop, but feels overwhelming guilt. He fears that the best thing he could do for hip hop is to stop making albums.
It’s all very meta, and none of it is comfortable. Is he helping white people to get woke? Is it more apologetic than insightful? Does it make for an entertaining listen? Or are we eavesdropping on someone else’s therapy session?
He’s clearly a talented lyricist, and Ryan Lewis’s production ideas are, without exception, cool and interesting. In the end, though, Macklemore’s sensitive contortions feel very internal. You respect his efforts in sorting out his psyche and his place in the world. But as you watch him twist and bend over himself to avoid offense, it’s more intellectual than visceral. Careful introspection does not always make for a satisfying listen. His conscious approach is admirable, but not always fun.
Mixologi 