Zach

Nothing wrong with Macklemore. But there is something wrong with this article and your blanket statements and judgements coming from a position of bias. Masked in your careless wording and failure to be truly thoughtful is your own prejudice, something that you say you appreciate Macklemore for challenging. You should use your power as somebody who parents listen to, to be more thorough in your research, fair to a genre and understanding of people’s differences. Have you ever written up about a rapper of color who raps about positive things or are they all too inappropriate for your children. Please see your paragraph that I have pasted below and lets unpack some of the inferred meaning within those sentences:

“But when I hear songs like “Thrift Shop”, and especially “Same Love”, I see how it fits; Macklemore writes about real life, real problems, and real people. He breaks the negative stereotypes of rap, and had the courage to break through trends and challenge his listeners to do the same. He writes about issues that I see teens struggle with every day, like wearing the ‘right’ clothes in “Thrift Shop”, and dealing with sexuality and discrimination, as in his hit “Same Love”: ”

He breaks through the “negative stereotypes of rap” and writes about “real life, real problems, and real people.” These “real people,” are real people as defined by you. As if the “only real people” are people that you can relate to. The people that you interact with. Macklemore grew up going to the Bush school, an expensive private school in Seattle before eventually going to public schools and getting those more diverse experiences. He grew on Capital Hill a predominantly white middle to upper class neighborhood. My point being that clearly you can relate to him. You and your readers love him because now they get to like rap on their terms. This is real life to some people. http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=7F9lQQg3HnY . This is real life for some people http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=q-yYwKYqtsU . This too http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=DHyqs0PoBgE .

Rap and hip hop was born out your culture. It was born out of a culture of poverty, inequity, no opportunity, inescapable negativity. Most rap speaks to real people. Of course there are the exceptions of people that glorify a life they never lived to sell records. However, I challenge you to attempt to gain a real understanding of the culture before generalizing and labeling something as negative. Understand context. Understand that there are artists of color that are rapping about positive messages just like Macklemore. Rapper Murs is from Crenshaw a much more homophobic neighborhood than Capitol Hill. He not only made a song speaking to and challenging homophobia, he (a heterosexual man) acted as the main gay character and even kissed a man to make a statement and push the boundaries of his art (Please see http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=WwTSPcNSi40). Understand that there are artists of color who use their platform to talk about their experiences that might be different from yours and Macklemores. Sometimes they use “bad” language and see things from a different scope than you. I doubt that you would like an artist like Kendrick Lamar who is positive, thoughtful and intelligent but raps about his experiences growing up in Compton as opposed to Capitol Hill Seattle. Understand that there are rappers that grew up in severe poverty and that the priorities that they grew up with may be different from yours. Chief Keef is a gangster rapper that has negative content in his music. He lives in a violent Chicago neighborhood and is 17 years old. There were 72 shootings in Chicago over 4th of July weekend this year. 532 murders in Chicago in 2012. That’s life for some people. Chance the Rapper (one of Macklemore’s favorite rappers) is also a young rapper from a very violent Chicago neighborhood. He raps about family and positive things but he is also informed by his surroundings. In certain areas of Chicago you can’t escape gang lifestyle. That doesn’t make them bad people. It doesn’t make their art any less worthy. Its way too easy to lump everybody together but I find it very offensive that you would make such a general judgement about rap when it is something so multifaceted. There is a long and multifaceted history that you neglect and brush over when you make such general statements and it makes you look like a paternal character that sees yourself as above it all. You don’t get to decide what good rap is if you don’t take the time to understand the genre.