Hi, long time reader, first time asker.
Just wanted to say that your (free!) explainer on the Kendrick vs Drake beef was very good and informative and thanks for writing it
Also wanted to express my own agreement that while Macklemore may have had good intentions his lyrics still have not improved much (if at all) since Thrift Shop and if his intentions were in fact as good as people say he probably wouldn't have wanted people to use his fundraiser song as a tool of harassment (but what do I know)
(sorry about all the parentheticals)
thank you bud! i considered putting it on aftermath but i didn't want to have to write something..... rigorous lol. it was fun too!
and yeah, completely agreed re: macklemore. as time passes, i find it more and more suspect that he stuck his nose into the kendrick/drake beef or made mention of it at all (he didn't have to!) especially given that he won the grammy for rap album of the year over both kendrick AND drake, and he knew that that was wrong at the time and went so far as to apologize for it to kendrick.
when macklemore posted the texts he sent kendrick on instagram it felt performative to me, and this song, while it has noble ambitions, also has the stench of being performative. macklemore's career as a hip hop artist has struck me as being more about his marketing--woke white rapper who talks about thrifting and homophobia being bad--rather than his technical skill. i can see why he'd reference the beef for the sake of publicity, but it also feels like he did that because he knows the song wouldn't get the same kind of attention if he didn't.
black artists in hip hop have talked about palestine long before october 7th, and a lot of non-white celebrities have put their careers on the line to make a statement. literally a latina actress lost the lead role in scream over supporting palestine in her instagram stories. compared to that, macklemore really doesn't have much of anything to risk, and on top of that, he has also admitted to not really knowing much about palestine until after october 7th.
it's strange to hold him up as an artist supporting the cause when, say, redveil displayed all the names of children murdered in gaza at camp flog gnaw last year and, against the demand of the administration, is continuing to say free palestine at his performance at UC Santa Cruz and specifically went to the student encampment there to perform for them. Hell, JPEGMAFIA invited Redveil on stage at his performance AT NYU to lead the students in a chant of "free palestine" and at the same performance Kelela called out the administration there for their punitive actions against the students.
compared to all that, what macklemore is doing really gives carpetbagger. it gives bandwagoner. it gives, i am sorry to say, not a colleague but a colonizer. i am glad he's directing funds to gaza, but we do not need to center him in this conversation AT ALL.
