When we talk of appropriation today, however, we are really talking about power and access: about the politics of making-and listening to-music at a time when many people live by the laissez-faire attitude that we are entitled to one another’s cultures, genres, stories. Cultures have always evolved through exchange and mixture. Appropriation is a blunt charge, and can become a never-ending game of gotcha. Macklemore, in particular, has come to symbolize the potential whitewashing of hip-hop. In recent years, however, anxieties have grown around white artists who commit acts of cultural appropriation. It’s a belief that diversifying the charts-the mere act of being exposed to difference-can reshape society in some essential, if unquantifiable, way. Pop music has long relied on a dream of being a utopian space, capable of bringing people of disparate backgrounds together. These reactions stood in for a larger schism. But, for those who considered “The Heist” the work of an interloper, Macklemore became a villain. After the show, Macklemore posted a picture of a text he had sent Lamar, suggesting that he felt unworthy: “It’s weird and sucks that I robbed you.” His fans found the gesture sweet and earnest. At the 2014 Grammy Awards, the duo won awards for Best New Artist and Best Rap Album, beating the beloved Compton rapper Kendrick Lamar both times. The songs’ crossover success was, at least in part, the result of an unusual agreement that Macklemore and Lewis entered into with Warner Music Group: they released the album themselves, but they drew on the label’s promotional resources in exchange for a percentage of the album’s sales. It’s the kind of thing you might hear at spin class or on alternative-rock radio. The three singles appeared on “The Heist” (2012), an immensely successful album that seemed to exist at a distance from the hip-hop mainstream. These hits resulted in the rediscovery of “Can’t Hold Us,” a relentlessly upbeat motivational anthem with the energy of a small star going nova. In 2012, they released two wildly popular singles: “Same Love,” a soft-lit ballad that was adopted as an informal theme song for Washington’s campaign to legalize same-sex marriage, and “Thrift Shop,” a bargain shopper’s manifesto that doubled as a goofy, self-deprecating play on hip-hop’s boastful style. The year after the release of “The Language of My World,” he began working with the Seattle producer Ryan Lewis, who brought a pop sheen and a knack for big choruses to Macklemore’s impassioned rhymes. He would have cobbled together a long career as a witty, well-meaning rapper, playing shows at colleges and festivals in front of committed fans who related to him and his thematic concerns.
It’s easy to envision what would have happened had Macklemore’s trajectory as an independent artist plateaued then. Bush to mischievous tales of scoring a fake I.D., it didn’t seem like a contradiction that required resolution. On an album with songs ranging from attacks on George W. “So where does this leave me? / I feel like I pay dues but I’ll always be a white MC / I give everything I have when I write a rhyme / But that doesn’t change the fact that this culture’s not mine.” In the end, Macklemore resolves to keep walking the world aware of his privilege, hopeful that his listeners will do the same. The song also seemed to suggest that Macklemore was somehow different, blessed-or burdened-with slightly more self-consciousness than other white hip-hop artists or fans.
In a song titled “White Privilege,” he examined the tensions of his life as a white rapper: “Where’s my place in a music that’s been taken by my race / Culturally appropriated by the white face?” It was an honest, questing attempt to face the guilt of the gentrifier, wary of what he embodies yet pleased with the new view.
In 2005, the Seattle rapper Macklemore released his début album, “The Language of My World.” Its impact was modest, confined mostly to the Northwest. Appropriation is a blunt charge, but Macklemore now seems like its poster child.
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