Remember Macklemore?
There was a time when it looked like he"d be the biggest rapping haircut since Vanilla Ice, but these days, the Seattle-based MC seems to spend most of his time standing in Russell Wilson"s pool offering words of encouragement and shilling headphones.
But fear not, fans of non-threatening, mediocre hip hop:
The Mack is back, and he"s throwing all kinds of topical shade in his new song, "White Privilege II."
To be clear, it"s admirable that Macklemore is making an effort to address important matters that most artists in his position would choose to ignore.
At the same time, however, he"s playing it safe by slamming a dead guy and two women who he knows are unlikely to hit back with a diss track.
Worse, he fails to clarify how he"s not guilty of the same thing of which he"s accusing them.
The lines that are getting the most attention today are as follows:
"You"ve exploited and stolen the music, the moment/ The magic, the passion, the fashion, you toy with/ The culture was never yours to make better/ You"re Miley, you"re Elvis, you"re Iggy Azalea
"You"ve heisted the magic / You"ve taken the drums and the accent you rap in/ Your brand of hip hop is so fascist and backwards that Grandmaster Flash is gonna slap you, you bastard."
As far as we can tell, the central argument of the song is that because Macklemore attended the Ferguson protests, he"s uniquely qualified to "borrow" from black culture.
We"re not sure that"s his call to make, but even if it is, there"s more than one way to acknowledge and honor the ongoing struggle of black Americans and use one"s fame to try and affect positive change.
While we can"t speak for Iggy, we know that Miley has done so on numerous occasions, and she"s not alone:
Why no mention of Eminem, Action Bronson, Machine Gun Kelly, or El-P on the track?
Simple – Mack is smart enough not to level such accusations against rappers who he knows would murder him on wax.
Like we said, we respect Macklemore for attempting to spark a conversation, but starting things off by declaring that he"s not complicit in all of this because he says so is more than a little ridiculous.
There is no American music that doesn"t borrow heavily from black culture, and whether they"re musicians or not, all Americans should be doing whatever they can to right the wrongs of history and acknowledge the contributions of oppressed peoples.
Macklemore wants you to think that"s what he"s doing here, but in reality, he"s just pointing fingers in hopes of shifting the blame.
