By: Conner Williams Editor in Chief
“We take all we want from black culture, but will we show up for black lives?”
The popular Seattle-based rapper/producer-duo Macklemore & Ryan Lewis recently debuted a new track entitled “White Privilege II” that analyzes a variety of different racial issues while simultaneously providing the rapper’s personal narrative on his role in the fight for racial justice.
The song itself is a mix between Macklemore’s inner conflict with himself about his place in the discussion as well as a social outcry for the end of systematic white privilege.
Macklemore admits repeatedly that he has exploited hip-hop to benefit himself, saying lines like, “Fake and so plastic, you’ve heisted the magic (in reference to his 2012 debut album “The Heist”), you’ve taken the drums and the accent you rapped in, your brand of hip-hop it’s so fascist and backwards.”
And while Macklemore is known for creating music that provides a narrative for social justice in many aspects, he questions his motives for doing so repeatedly. The song opens up with the line, “Pulled into the parking lot, parked it, zipped up my parka, joined the procession of marchers, in my head like ‘is this awkward? Should I even be here marching?’”
Macklemore wishes to show solidarity with Black Americans, but he isn’t quite sure how to do so, as his very presence may be seen as hypocritical or unwanted. He condemned his own use of social media to show support for Mike Brown by saying, “You can join the march, protest, scream and shout, get on Twitter hash-tag and seem like you’re down, but they see through it all, people believe you now?”
The rapper received a significant amount of hate when he won the Grammy for album of the year for “The Heist” over Kendrick Lamar’s “Good Kid, M.A.A.D. City” a few years ago. However, Macklemore posted a photo of a screenshot text he sent to Lamar on his Instagram page in which he admitted that Lamar should have won and that he “got robbed.”
Many believe that Macklemore won the Grammy because of his ethnicity, which is not something that the rapper would disagree with based on his reaction to the victory, and it is part of the white privilege that he discusses in his new song.
The prevalence of white privilege in our society rears its ugly head in many ways. For example, the rate of incarceration for black men in the United States is about 1 in 15, while that for white men is about 1 in 106, according to the Center for American Progress. Additionally, the Bureau of Justice Statistics estimates that one in three black men can expect to go to prison in their lifetime. The U.S. Sentencing Commission also stated that black men receive prison sentences that are 10 percent longer than those of white men for the same crime.
The third verse of the track consists of a scenario where a woman approaches Macklemore in what sounds like a restaurant. She begins the conversation by saying she knows he’s by himself and that he doesn’t want to be disturbed, but that her kids love his music so much and are always singing, “I’m gonna pop some tags,” and that he is the only hip-hop artists she lets her kids listen to. She praises him for his song “Same Love,” in which he advocates for gay rights. She only lets her kids listen to him because he “gets it,” that “all that negative stuff isn’t cool.” “The b—–s and the hoes and the gangs and the thugs, even the protest outside, so sad and so dumb. If a cop pulls you over, it’s your fault if you run.”
She was referring to a protest in which participants chanted, “Hands up, don’t shoot!” in reference to the killing of Mike Brown when he was shot in August 2014 while he was unarmed. But yes, it was his fault that he was gunned down while he was unarmed. Macklemore shakes his head and puts down his dishes in the background of the conversation.
Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ new album “This Unruly Mess I’ve Made” is set to release on Feb. 26.
