So, chances are good you’ve heard Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’s new song, "White Privilege II." To be fair, calling "White Privilege II" a song is a bit of a stretch; it’s really more like an eight-minute spoken word piece with some twinkling piano keys thrown in. But what this song lacks in musical appeal, it more than compensates for in controversy. This is, essentially, eight minutes of a white rapper exploring his role in the modern day conversation on race, and while you might not agree with the message he sends or the method he chose to send it in, you have to admit this song is very, very interesting. Throw in an Iggy Azalea/Miley Cyrus diss and the fact that this song is almost guaranteed to alienate Macklemore’s own fanbase, and you have the perfect recipe for controversy.
The first step in forming an opinion on this song is understanding the overall message Macklemore is trying to convey. I think a lot of people, particularly white people, take this song as a personal attack accusing them of not earning the things that they have because they were born white. I can definitely understand where this idea comes from, but I do not think this is Macklemore’s overall message.
As he raps about feeling out-of-place yelling "black lives matter" or about appropriating black culture to become famous, Macklemore is not necessarily insulting or attacking white people, but struggling with his own hypocrisy—and by extension, the larger hypocrisy of white people joining in on the Black Lives Matter movement. Lines like “Are you marching for freedom/or when it’s convenient” or “In front of a line of police that look the same as me/only separated by a badge, a baton, a can of mace” are genuinely thoughtful and offer a much-needed social critique.
With that said, it’s impossible to ignore the fact that, while this song is used to support racial equality and provide perspective on the role white people play in the new racial landscape, it still comes from the man who stole Kendrick’s Grammy and uses the genre that was created to give black people a voice to make pop songs about buying second-hand clothing. Macklemore himself has a lot to say about this hypocrisy as well.
One of the most interesting elements of "White Privilege II" is that Macklemore does not try and defend himself; in fact, he openly invites criticism of who he is, the role he plays in society and how he became famous. The entire third verse is a conversation between Macklemore and a nameless older mom, who complements Macklemore on making “positive music” and avoiding negative stuff, like guns drugs and hoes. The verse ends with the mom saying “Even the protests outside, so sad and so dumb/if a cop pulls you over it’s your own fault if you run.” Here Macklemore looks at how his poppy, "white-friendly" brand of rap music has alienated more traditional rap. In other words, because his rap music is so catchy and family-friendly, it confirms stereotypes that traditional rap music (guns, drugs and hoes) is an accurate reflection of black cultural ideals, as opposed to the reflection of a reality largely created through oppression. This is a remarkably thoughtful and scathing self-critique, and Macklemore does not stop there.
In the fourth verse, Macklemore gets into the heart of his argument. The lines “If I’m the hero, you know who gets cast as the villain,” or “My success is the product of the same system that let off Darren Wilson- guilty/we want to dress like, walk like, talk like, dance like, yet we just stand by/we take all we want from black culture but will we show up for black lives?” continue the theme of Macklemore and Ryan Lewis being part of the problem. They even take this idea one step further, rapping “The DIY underdog, so independent/but the one thing the American dream fails to mention/is I was many steps ahead to begin with,” implying that the duo’s underdog, independent success story would likely not be true if they were not white. This is undoubtedly a brave statement for a rapper to offer up seemingly out of the blue, but I think it’s also fair to say that Macklemore really doesn’t help the problem by raising this critique.
Indeed, one could easily make the argument that this entire song is designed to cast Macklemore as the victim of his own privilege, thus further sympathizing both himself and, by extension, the white man. One could also argue that he is pandering to the black listener in order to expand his fan base beyond his current, mainly white following. Additionally, it’s hard not to raise an eyebrow at the fact that Macklemore waited until a month before his album drops to stir up controversy by injecting himself into the conversation on race—and one must remember that, while it’s cool that Macklemore draws attention to these critiques, this does not mean they’re also inaccurate. It’s nice that he’s thinking about his privilege and the negative impact he may have had on rap music, but that doesn’t negate his walking off the stage with Kendrick’s Grammy, or "Thrift Shop" getting an absurd amount of airplay while great albums by Schoolboy Q or Ab-Soul were almost entirely ignored by most major radio stations in 2012.
