To be Macklemore & Ryan Lewis is to be scrutinised ceaselessly. The most consequential white hip-hop act since Eminem, this Seattle duo became a pop sensation, hip-hop curio and sociocultural lightning rod in 2012 on the back of the quirky breakthrough Thrift Shop. The boisterous and off-kilter track turned out to be the first in a string of four Billboard top 15 hits, two of which went to number one.
The success of rapper Macklemore (born Ben Haggerty) and Lewis, a producer, was a reflection of the diffusion of hip hop’s centre, and the reach of its outer limits — here was a hip-hop group preoccupied with anti-ostentation and marriage equality, a combination that proved palatable to white audiences, which gobbled up the duo’s music, helping make its debut album, The Heist, go platinum.
But their success led to several moments of friction, including at the 2014 Grammys, where the duo won four times, including three rap categories, leading to a now infamous text from Macklemore to Kendrick Lamar: “It’s weird and it sucks that I robbed you.”
After that, the duo kept a low profile, in part because Macklemore had a drug relapse. Beginning last summer, however, they began their return, and Friday, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis will release their second full-length album, This Unruly Mess I’ve Made (Macklemore LLC), a record that continues the high-wire tug-of-war of its debut. On the one end are whimsical, cheeky numbers such as Let’s Eat, the bonus track Spoons (about spooning), and Downtown, which features hip-hop pioneers Melle Mel, Grandmaster Caz and Kool Moe Dee. (Downtown is the only single to chart thus far, peaking at No. 12, although it hasn’t matched the impact of the duo’s earlier hits.) On the other side are the lectures and confessions, like the addiction narrative Kevin and White Privilege II, in which Macklemore unpacks his complicated relationship with the advantages that helped make him and Lewis stars.
Here are excerpts from an interview.
So far, there have been three songs in the roll-out to this album: Downtown, Kevin and White Privilege II. Two are essentially middle fingers to pop. Do you feel that if you don’t have a record on the level of Thrift Shop, Same Love or Can’t Hold Us, that’s a failure?
Macklemore: Maybe that’s the best thing for our careers, to not have a hit right now. Like if Downtown would have come out and sold, like, 5 million, and it would have been on every radio station all the time, I think that would have been probably more problematic than good.
Do you also think that if you don’t have four big hits, a lot of the critiques or negativity thrown your way will be lessened? If you’re less of a presence you’re less of a threat.
Macklemore: That equation could make sense. I feel callused in the best way possible, right now, in terms of public perception. To say that I don’t care would be false. But to say that I’m in the best place that I have been since The Heist would be accurate.
Do you feel like you get supported privately by people who won’t support you publicly?
Macklemore: Mm-hmm.
How does that feel?
Macklemore: I understand it. I think that I always will be a polarising artist in terms of public opinion. I am also not someone who’s like, let me go and tell the world what this person that I really look up to just said about me. Are there times that I wish that what was said to me in private was translated? Absolutely. But I also understand it in a way that doesn’t leave me resentful.
Did any potential collaborators turn you down on this record?
Macklemore: Adele.
What song?
Macklemore: Growing Up. She graciously passed. I’m sure that there were times that we never heard back from somebody’s manager or something like that, but for the most part, no.
What did you learn from the fallout from the 2014 Grammys? Both winning the awards and what happened afterward.
Mackelmore: I think that I reacted out of a place of fear. Being able to see the machine for what it is and then still benefiting that from that machine. Knowing who makes up committees, who the programme directors are, who the intended audience is, mainstream success, white America: When you look at all these things and how they add up, I felt conflicted about the win. As much as I still probably believe what that sentiment was, doing that in a public space was a mistake.
This might sound strange, but I see that moment as White Privilege 1.5. It really is the transition moment. The confusion in the first verse of White Privilege II is the same confusion experienced, I imagine, immediately in the aftermath of the backlash of that text. What felt like the responsible way to handle it turned out to actually be completely not the responsible way to handle it.
Macklemore: Stepping into the space of White Privilege II, it was the conversation of race in America, of cultural appropriation, of privilege, of white supremacy. It’s really messy subject matter, and it has a lot of areas that are like, “Oh, don’t go there, don’t say that, don’t do that.” So people stay silent, and the system perpetuates itself. And white supremacy continues to win the longer that we stay silent.
White Privilege II you chose to make nine minutes, not pop song length.
Macklemore: Well, for one, I don’t think that talking about white supremacy or privilege or police brutality, or cultural appropriation can be condensed into nine minutes, much less three minutes. I wanted to make a piece of audio that operated in vignettes.
I don’t know if this was deliberate, but the middle section of the song reminded me a lot of Eminem’s Stan. That’s a narrative play piece, but still works as a pop song. And then you think of By the Time I Get To Arizona or ____Tha Police, which are message-driven but still work within that pop framework.
Macklemore: I didn’t want to conform to that. It was supposed to be uncomfortable. Can we be uncomfortable?
You don’t think you could have done with this what you did with Same Love?
Macklemore: No, I don’t.
Do you feel like being a white rapper is implicitly political?
Macklemore: I don’t. I think that there are numerous examples of white rappers that don’t want to talk about politics, that don’t want to bring up their whiteness in interviews.
Iggy Azalea is not rapping about whiteness, or about anxiety about participation in hip-hop culture. But is there not something almost political in her rejection of that? Maybe not politics that you agree with ...
Macklemore: I don’t know.
Do you feel that you could be a white rapper who’s not a political rapper?
Macklemore: I think I could.
You are on this album in places.
Ryan Lewis: I think the privilege that we have within this space completely opens up the door for us in a greater way to at least try making these very different kinds of polarising songs, and having that be OK.
Macklemore: Like, let’s make a dance song. Let’s make a song about race. Let’s make a song about eating.
Lewis: And, that’s not necessarily the case for a lot of other artists.
Being a white rapper means that you can rap about a range of subjects that maybe other rappers can’t speak about, or are discouraged from speaking about.
I was thinking, “Only a white artist would have made White Privilege II” but I was also thinking, “Maybe only a white artist would have made Spoons.” That song is equally fascinating. Whiteness moves in an overt political way, but also, in these smaller gestural ways. Do you think about that?
Macklemore: I’m aware of it. I think about it. I don’t ever want to create from a space of, you know, because I’m safe to this audience, to this white demographic, that means I can rap about Spoons and be fine, [so] I shouldn’t do it. I think that as long as there is a balance throughout an album of who I generally am, I feel good about myself as a whole.
