Macklemore, "Same Love"

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.

whether it's neoliberal or neoconservative or post-black these terms ask for trouble because their users plead for our forbearance, i.e. "this is how I'm different but for safety's sake I'm gonna keep a couple of fingers on the root form of this word."

i'm really confused, did Whiney call Slim Thug white?

haha i thought the same thing, maybe wgw is leaking industry secrets.

Hahaha, I meant Paul Wall

#controversysells

I read that Slim Thug wrote "Like a Boss" and assumed he was in Lonely Island.

lol man I read that post like four times front to back trying to figure out if it was real or not based on that one single misstep.

hahaha

i google image searched Slim Thug to see if there was another Slim Thug i wasn't aware of

But of course!

http://gawker.com/sharkfacegang-1465744396

lol at their nice young man practiced smiles

i don't think they have to practice, they really are nice young men!

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

― lag∞n, Friday, November 15, 2013 3:01 PM (Yesterday) Bookmark Flag Post Permalink

i kinda want to compile some kind of anthology of how white underground rap message board dudes have reacted to Macklemore's success, has to be fascinating/hilarious. ICP's review of his video was pretty classic:

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=my9mjd0BTyY

those smiles looked pretty practiced tho u must admit, which is something nice young men do, macklemore obvs more successful than ryan lewis in this case, ten thousand hours and all

i saw SHARK FACE GANG shirts at his show but idgi... is it cuz macklemore looks like a shark? cuz i could see that

http://pixarne.ws/wp-content/uploads/2012/07/cfa93438511db9e60b63708e36e4230a.jpg

http://edge-img.datpiff.com/m8deca0c/Jay-White_Great_Mixtape-front-large.jpg

http://i.imgur.com/7Ve9sB9.png

like macklemore and ryan lewis needed an extra $15

ha

lmao

otm

http://www.bet.com/shows/106-and-park/photos/the-buzz/2014/01/the-buzz-drake-covers-kanye-beyonce-ousted-and-more/_jcr_content/leftcol/flipbook/flipbookimage_5.flipfeature.dimg/010714-macklemore-the-source-magazine-cover.jpg
http://mburgan.files.wordpress.com/2008/12/mugshot__malcolm-x.jpg

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