Soon-to-be dad Macklemore on white rappers and the appropriation of hip hop
Macklemore, who just announced that his fiancee Tricia Davis is pregnant, has recently said some thoughtful words about his position as a white rapper.
With Iggy Azalea catching a bit of heat lately for cultural appropriation, Macklemore felt he needed to say some things about this very sensitive and complicated issue on Hot 97, and he presented himself pretty well.
When asked about racism, he eloquently explained what “white privilege” is. “For me, as a white dude, as a white rapper, how do I participate in this conversation? How do I get involved on a level where I’m not co-opting the movement, or I’m not making it about ME, and also realizing the platform and the reach that I have? Doing it in a genuine, authentic way,” Macklemore explained. “Because racism is uncomfortable to talk about. And white paople, we can just turn off the tv when we’re sick of talking about racism. It does not work that way for everybody.”
“I was talking to somebody the other day, and they said to me, ‘Silence is an action.’ And it is my privilege that I can be silent about this issue. And I’m tired of being silent. I’ve been silent for a long time about it. Because I didn’t want to mess up. Didn’t want to say the wrong thing. Didn’t want to offend anybody. But it is so imperative right now that we have this raised conversationin America. If we’re going to progress, if we’re going to move past it, if we’re going to truly work together, we’re going to have to get past that awkward stage of race conversation. Step up and just have it. And I don’t know where that starts, other than just speaking about it. As a white person, we have to listen. We need to direct the attention to people of color who are on the round mobilizing, and listen to those people, and take some direction.”
He also thinks that he doesn’t get a lot of heat for cussing on his record or for his past drug issues the way a black rapper would. “There’s no difference … I got put in that ‘hero’ box and I think that when that happens, it’s because of white privilege,” he says.
As for appropriating hip hop, he shows a respect for the history of hip hop, and the pain of that history. “You need to know your place in the culture. Are you contributing or are you taking? Are you using it for your own advantage or are you contributing? I saw a tweet that said, ‘Hip hop was birthed out of the civil rights movement.’ This is a culture that came from pain and oppression. It was the byproduct [of white oppression]. We can say we’ve come a long way since the late Seventies and early Eighties, but we haven’t. Just because there’s been more successful white rappers, you cannot disregard where this culture came from and our place in it as white people. This is not my culture to begin with. As much as I have honed my craft … I do believe that I need to know my place.”
Happy New Year my people. Photo @jkoephoto
In other Macklemore news, he (real name Ben Haggerty) and his fiancee Tricia Davis confirmed that they are expecting a baby after news of their expected new addition leaked to Page Six. “Today the media speculated about some big news in our life, so we decided to share it with you ourselves,” they shared in this sweet video that starts with the couple listening to their baby’s heartbeat for the first time.
