Macklemore, "Same Love"

yeah people are def misconstruing that but its ok cause he also called macklemore 'a good rapper' in the same piece

macklemore's the first huge rapper whose music is targeted strictly at white listeners. which is true.

Did 1999 not happen?

who was in 1999

are you talking about eminem?

shawn mullins technically isn't a "rapper"

tbf post-black is a pretty provocative and vague way to phrase it

i think the thing that ppl on twitter are missing about this is the word "contextually" ... plenty of writers have made the case for pop in 2013 -- the context around macklemore -- being "post-black."

there was nothing "post-black" at all about pop when eminem came up. or in a more granular sense about eminem at all, who came up thru battle rap culture in detroit and who was surrounded by/collaborated with black rappers and producers.

and his music was enjoyed by many black people

tho not so much anymore id imagine

has eminem become post black

free thinkpiece you guys

Was actually thinking more along the lines of ICP, but we could of course keep moving these goal posts till the gays get married.

ICP was never really Macklemore huge, though

there has def been rap for and by wites its just never been #1 chart material before

xp

its crazy how anticonesque he is, bet its got some retired beardo rappers feeling sort of self conscious right now

not that they werent self conscious already right folks

yeah "pop-star rapper" is a key part of that sentence

I missed a lot of these asterisks. Because I didn't read the article. ._.

the thing that I learned in that piece tho that I feel shd be getting more attention is that he has a malcolm gladwell inspired song '10000 hours' when is the ted talk human civilization is useless mistake

I'm sat here wondering what "post-black" means in this or any context really. If he just means that Macklemeh's fanbase is mostly white as a deliberate marketing choice on his part, then that's still an odd word to use to describe that.

I've seen the term around, but only in the context that http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Post-black_art has:

In 2001 the phrase was explained in detail in the exhibition catalogue for The Studio Museum in Harlem’s exhibition entitled "Freestyle." Freestyle was an exhibition that included twenty-eight up and coming artists of African American backgrounds. Golden defined post-black art as that which includes artists who are “adamant about not being labeled ‘black’ artists, though their work was steeped, in fact deeply interested, in redefining complex notions of blackness.”

Jon Caramanica ‏@joncaramanica 1h

Sigh. It's not a compliment - it's a warning.

I'm sat here wondering what "post-black" means in this or any context really. If he just means that Macklemeh's fanbase is mostly white as a deliberate marketing choice on his part, then that's still an odd word to use to describe that.

― Greer, Friday, November 15, 2013 3:23 PM (25 minutes ago) Bookmark

i think he's calling pop music "post-black" which Itunes, Billboard, and the marginalization of black music and black audiences in America

I feared as much.

I don't know Caramanica but I bet, like most critics of his generation, there's a couple of hundred black MCs he prefers to Macklemore. People are acting like his message is "Hooray, it's whitey's turn!"

I'd like to read someone good taking a big-picture look at all the themes that have been going around ILX this year re: the Billboard charts, Lorde, Macklemore, etc. Black artists do seem to be on the back foot suddenly and that's weird and surprising. It's not quite Disco Sucks redux but there's an element of that.

People are acting like his message is "Hooray, it's whitey's turn!"

this is sort of the subtext!

i mean seriously like every single macklemore song is essentially "rappers are this way, but i'm THAT way!"

rappers are materialistic, i'm not
rappers are homophobic, i'm not
rappers do drugs and drink, i don't

etc

<q>Lorde, Macklemore, etc. </q>

Lily Allen if there was ever a chance on earth she would chart a single in america

Yeah, Macklemore fans have the smugness of Decemberists fans but instead of feeling superior to people that didn;t graduate college, it's feeling superior to black culture

xp No, I mean Caramanica's message, not Macklemore's. I hate Macklemore.

I almost posted my interpretation of Macklemore doing a verse of "I Don't Like", what the fuck has become of my life

oh ok xp

I am going to see macklemore tomorrow apparently

i had a good time at the show

I will post if I end up seeing him but I have no idea what's going on he's not even on the west coast apparently but someone yesterday told me I'm going to see macklemore tomorrow?

while i get what he's saying, "post-black" is a gross, horrible way to say it.

whether or not he means them, using it in a music review suggests all kinds of connotations of "black" being an event, a genre, something that can be built off of or moved beyond - which, personally, isn't a road i wanna get near

and before someone says "well of COURSE he doesn't mean it as a GENRE!" the guy wrote a piece about Robin Thicke's place in the genre of "white-soul" earlier this year.

actually, that he refers to macklemore as a "contextually post-black rapper" rather than treating "white rap" as a genre the way he treats "white soul," suggests he's really underthought his short-hand for the subject matter he wants to cover. so if he gets shit from people who don't want to give him the benefit of the doubt, maybe he should be a better writer.

or it suggests his hyphens are in the wrong places.

holding out for "post-macklemore"

post-more

Lemme just thank everyone ever for not referring to pat Boone as "contextually post-black"

"post-black" as a shorthand for Macklemore makes perfect sense to me

i.e.,

Unless you're a Ron Paul supporter, it should go without saying the USA's treatment of African-Americans in this country for the last, oh, 400 years has been notably shitty, right up to 2013: Job inequality is still in effect, the judicial system is still stacked, wealth distribution is fucked, and in Florida, Detroit and "stand your ground" states it's practically legal to shoot black people.

Hip-hop music — while not a cipher for the African-American experience, don;'t get it twisted — is easily the most popular art form invented and performed primarily by African-Americans in the last 40 years. That cannot be disputed.

It the 1970s it sprouted from a community that literally had nothing, which is why the instruments were other people's records. In turn, even 40 years later, America is still fucked up and rap music made by African-Americans often — implicitly or quite explicitly — reflects this fucked-up state, whether vivid tales of the neighborhoods the evening news doesn't show (Kendrick Lamar, Ice T) or mythical tales of crime (Jay Z, E-40) or simply aspirational (every time i come into your city bling bling).

White teenagers, of course, are drawn to alienation and angst (what do you think fuels heavy metal, punk, and other predominately white, teenage music forms?). HOWEVER, every time white people rapped, they tried to emulate SOMETHING in hip-hop, whether that means copped some of the slang (Marky Mark) or the back stories (Vanilla Ice) or the tales of violence (Beastie Boys) or the swagger (Eminem) or the fashion (Slim Thug) or went extra steps to show they respected the culture (3rd Bass)

Macklemore is the first popular rapper to not only be AWARE of his white privilege ("White Privilege"), but to take the extra, disgusting step and ignore it entirely.

And, in turn, a white dude who went to a liberal arts college is out here preaching that every black person in America should be more like Fugazi. Fuck him.

to me "post-black" means "post- having to ever acknowledge the history and culture and contributions of African-Americans" which, yes, he is the first popular rapper to do

wow i get what he means but how do you ever think that's a good way to put it?! you can't treat people's identities like they're made-up genre names

the reason i brought up Pat Boone is that, despite the fact that Boone divorced "black" music from its roots and sold it to white audiences just as much as macklemore has, no one would ever call him "contextually post-black" today because it would be weird to describe a white dude awkwardly singing "tutti frutti" 50+ years ago as being "post-" such an amorphous phrase as "black," the concept of which as a music has evolved plenty since. while not a compliment per se, calling someone "contextually post-black" suggests a detached perspective where "black" is not an ethnic identity, but a style or event that can be built upon or evolved from, like "punk" or "rock." It takes the already sketchy notion of slapping an ethnicity in front of a musical style - "blue-eyed soul," for instance, and takes it a toxic step further, suggesting not just that you can make a style you're own simply by being a different ethnicity than its originators, but that you can TRANSCEND the ethnicity of the originators.

Upthread, there's a reference to the term being used to describe African-American artists who utilize familiar "black" concepts but don't want them to be labeled as such. While we can debate whether that's a worthwhile way to phrase that intention, a white critic using "post-black" as a way to describe someone you think has divorced a "black" sound from its roots is at best cynical and at worst supremacist.

in a sense, it IS a compliment because it suggests evolution rather than carpetbagging

I think we can all agree that when we see "neo" or "post" as a prefix we should reach for our keyboards.