I find it easiest to write to a personal soundtrack. As I write this, I’m playing Nothing Was the Same, rapper Drake’s latest album from September that was nominated for best rap album at the Grammy’s this past Sunday. I love Drake, and I especially loved Nothing Was the Same, because it was innovative, compassionate, complex and it just sounds sooo good. 

But enough about Drake, I’ll embarrass myself. The other nominees for Best Rap Album are mostly established, successful rappers, e.g. Kanye West (Yeezus), Jay-Z (Magna Carter Holy Grail), Macklemore & Ryan Lewis (The Heist) and new kid on the block, Kendrick Lamar (good kid, m.A.A.d city). The competition here, for those of us partial to rap and hip hop, was stiff as a board (mostly). Yeezus, Magna Carta, and NWTS were ambitious endeavors by the (commercial) creme of the rap industry crop, good kid, m.A.A.d city was a breakout album that blew a lot of people (myself included) away. The Heist was an album of party music and appropriation, amidst four albums that tackled a variety of socioeconomic issues the black community grapple with daily in a discriminatory racialized world (but let’s just focus on North America right now.)

Guess which album won that night?

If you watched the Grammy’s or googled the results (as I did, come on now), you’d know. If you didn’t, I’ll give you three white privileged, gentrifying and overall underwhelming guesses.

“But wait!” “Macklemore is cool!” “He wrote ‘Same Love!'” “He married people, I saw!”

Sure he did, and in doing so took his little privileged behind another peg up on my problematic-o-meter. Macklemore (and the mute Ryan Lewis?) is a straight white man interjecting himself not only in a music industry that was born out of little socioeconomic wiggle room and a desire for an outlet with which to deal with this inflexibility, but also the lives of queer couples, is so weird and problematic and frankly pretty stupid. Why should Macklemore be rewarded for occupying the same socioeconomic space hundreds of young men and women are striving and struggling to achieve, when his music has no struggle to speak for? Yes, he’s independent and that’s great in its own right, but not when he is simultaneously silencing the artistic and social ventures of marginalized people.

He actually has a song called “White Privilege” and details how his success may come at the expense of others, and doesn’t see how this Grammy win (of FOUR) would ruffle a few feathers?

In the archives, Carter would likely call this, the situation of Macklemore at the Grammy’s, as an example of unintentional silences and domination of the marginalized voice by the voice in social power. Rap music is characterized by its calling attention to the injustices faced by the rapper, how that rapper acts against them, and makes use of consumptive lyrics to express all the great things that come with financial stability and success. A running theme in Yeezus is West’s explicit discontent with the way media and the music industry mechanism is not on his side, or on the side of black artists like him (see “New Slaves,” “I Am a God, “Black Skinhead”). Magna Carta extrapolates on how hard Jay-Z has worked to get where he is, and he is very, very successful. Both Drake and Lamar, young as they are, rap about where they are versus where they were, and what they hope to achieve in a horribly classist, racist and money-orientated society, among other personal problems.

In short, these albums are an archive of the rapper, of his success, contempt, turmoil, etc. These are drawn in most cases from personal experiences, a musical means of giving voice to their communities that are not as lucky as them. Rap music archives, one could argue, the problems mainstream white America is refusing to acknowledge.

But they do acknowledge Macklemore. “Same Love” is such a stupid, self-indulgent song. It does not help in the agency of queer people, it does not further the career of a queer artist, it does not make money for the queer community. “Same Love” is a song for allies. Queer people do not actually reap any immediate benefits from it if they don’t like the song, and don’t believe Macklemore is helping them.

(He isn’t.)

“White Privilege” is a song for who? What does a song like “Thrift Shop” do for racial equality or economic equity? How does an album that stays clear of sociopolitical claims beat out the fervent musings of his competitors? How does he get away with winning not one, but FOUR Grammy’s as the only white guy in his categories?

I sure don’t know, but check out here and here if you felt like I was relying on my bias (which admittedly I partially did).