On 'Gemini,' Macklemore Chooses Personal Deliverance Over Politics
The last time Macklemore released a solo album, it wasn't ironic to call him a conscious rapper.
The president had ascended to the nation's highest office despite losing the popular vote. The country was embroiled in an immigration debate stoked, in part, by the politics of fear. And a natural disaster in the making would soon highlight the systemic fault lines of race and class in America.
In 2005, The Language of My World touched on all of those social issues and more. It couldn't have come at a more appropriate time — unless it was released today.
Lest we forget, Macklemore was talking about "White Privilege" more than a decade ago, when his original song of that title appeared on Language, before the concept was even a passing thought in white America's collective consciousness. Then, he unwittingly came to epitomize it. He and producer/longtime collaborator Ryan Lewis released 2012's The Heist and — by virtue of its mainstream accessibility characterized by the gay-marriage anthem "Same Love," and diamond-selling pop hit "Thrift Shop" — robbed a deserving Kendrick Lamar of the best rap album Grammy. When the pair returned with last year's This Unruly Mess I've Made, batting clean-up with "White Privilege II," the sprawling, confessional dissertation of a song only made matters worse by critical and commercial accounts. As a white rapper enjoying stratospheric crossover success in a genre where his very presence alluded to cultural appropriation, he was critiquing a system that made him a primary beneficiary. It compromised his voice, as earnest and well-intended as it was, and put him in an impossible position. More than the woke white ally trying to be a bridge, he'd become a wedge as divisive as the issues he was advocating. It's the kind of thing that could be exhausting enough to tempt one to abdicate responsibility altogether, if one has the luxury to do so.
Following that release, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis decided to take an amicable break, leaving the Seattle rapper back in his solo bag. Working mainly with producers Josh "Budo" Karp and Tyler Dopps, he recorded his latest
