My 16-year-old sister has a crush on a musician. That, in and of itself, is pretty normal. What’s weird is that the musician is a 29-year-old rapper from Seattle who is simultaneously the biggest thing in the Seattle music scene right now and basically unknown outside of the Northwest and hardcore hip hop heads. It’s weirder when that guy feels a bit like extension of yourself.
Yesterday, The Heist, by Macklemore (née Ben Haggerty) and Ryan Lewis, was the number one album on iTunes. I have no idea how many copies that amounts to, or whether or not that’s even a meaningful place to look for whatever constitutes an album chart these days, but it’s still pretty damn cool, especially for two guys from Seattle making a hip hop album. The idea that great music could come out of Seattle isn’t exactly a new one, but things are different when it comes to hip hop: “Baby Got Back” is still the only song to originate from here that casual listeners have heard of.
The Heist might well change that. As mentioned above, I have a bit of an odd relationship with, or at least to, Macklemore. We’re both about the same age, from similar neighborhoods in Seattle, and over the last six or seven years I’ve heard him go through much of the early-mid-late 20s progression that I’ve undergone privately.
2005’s The Language of My World was a promising debut album, one that displayed Macklemore’s dual capacities for wit and introspection. Still, the album was torn: between songs with political meanings (“White Privilege”, “Claimin’ the City”, “Soldiers”), personal struggles (“Ego”, “Inhale Deep”), and the sort of goofy (“Fake I.D.”, “Penis Song”, “Remember High School”). Of course, the album was released when Macklemore was 21, so a certain scatter-shot approach was to be expected.
When I first got my hands on Language, I had just moved back to Seattle from college. I had a degree, a pile of student debt, and no idea what I wanted out of life. I didn’t really know what mattered to me, and when I re-read my writing from those days, I have to shake my head.
Still, the stage was set for Macklmore’s dynamic follow-up. For years, I waited to hear something about a new album, a tour, something. He played a few shows around the Seattle area: I saw him at the Eastlake Block Party along with about 20 other folks (and he ripped it, natch). Still, for a few years it looked like the Blue Scholars were the Great Northwest Rap Hope.
Little did we know that the drugs and alcohol that Macklemore had alluded to were conspiring to rob him of years of creativity. As he tells it, he basically spent 2005-2009 drunk, high, or both. While I’ve never dealt with drug or alcohol issues in that way, I know the mid-20s malaise well: trying to figure out what a career looks like, what love is, and most of all how to be the kind of person I want to be.
After a few years in the background, I’d almost forgotten about Macklemore. In fact, the only reason I thought about him was that he kept coming in to restaurants I worked in. Wait on the guy a few times, and you get the urge to throw his album on now and again.
He released The Unplanned Mixtape in late 2009, to some fanfare. “The Town” became an instant Seattle hip hop anthem, celebrating the halcyon days before the city closed down venues left and right and generally drove the hip hop scene underground. The single most important outcome of the release, however, was his collaboration with Lewis on “Fallin’”, as it set the stage for the next phase of his career.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=pIBdAdnTqqo]
Getting sober and getting with Lewis formed the basis for his next efforts, a pair of EPs, VS and VS Redux. They produced one of the most incisive and honest looks at drug use in hip hop, “Otherside”, a song that explores how hip hop glorifies and promotes drug use, often by rappers who no longer do what they rap about.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=fvDQy53eldY]
In a way, it feels like the two of us have been growing closer over the last few years. When beloved Seattle Mariners announcer Dave Niehaus died in late 2010, it was Macklemore who was able to articulate what an entire generation of fans was thinking: “Couldn’t have been more than ten/but to me and my friends/the voice on the other end/might as well have been God’s.” The song is more than just a beautiful tribute to the voice of the Mariners, it’s a reminder of how many boys (and more than a few girls) who grew up in the Seattle area in the 90s will always see baseball (and in some way life) through a certain lens.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hvNQWQSwmow]
It’s strange and a bit scary when an artist can touch a deep part of you. I know nostalgia is a powerful, powerful force, especially when it’s tangled up in things like youth, innocence, and sticking it to the goddamn New York Yankees, but listening to “My Oh My” was the moment when I started hoping in earnest for a new Macklemore album.
It’s sometime after this point that my youngest sister first asked me if I’d heard of Macklemore. I think I stunned her by not only knowing who he was, owning his album, and even having a promotional t-shirt, but by having met him (or at least taken his order) several times. Suffice to say, I suddenly became quite a bit cooler in her eyes. This Friday, I’ll be taking her to the WaMu Theater* for The Heist World Tour, and to see just where Macklemore and Ryan Lewis can take this hip hop thing.
(*Hooray for naming sponsorships that last longer than the institutions, themselves!)
As for the album, it’s really, really good. Macklemore is a gifted writer and rapper; he’s able to drop a word or two into a verse that, for lack of a better term, just jumps out. Lewis, meanwhile, creates some of the most complex sonic landscapes this side of Kanye, giving Macklemore ample room to explore everything from the joys of thrift shops (“Thrift Shop”) to the perils of the record industry (“Jimmy Iovine”). However, it’s his same-sex anthem “Same Love” that’s getting the most attention. In it, he takes the stance that as much as hip hop has worked towards racial unity and equality, it remains a moral backwater when it comes to LGBT rights.
[youtube http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlVBg7_08n0]
Most of all, though, The Heist seems to walk a very fine line between deep meaning and a playful sense of fun. Not the juvenile fun of Language, but the kind of fun a 29-year-old has hanging out with his friends on a Friday night, talking about the good ‘ol days and just being himself. For Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, as for me, that has to feel pretty good.
Zachary Geballe lives in Seattle and enjoys using the word “savory”.
(Image cc-licensed: "Macklemore and Ryan Lewis concert in Toronto" by thecomeupshow)
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