Macklemore & Ryan Lewis pierced popular consciousness last year with his smash single 'Thrift Shop' that topped the charts for 6 weeks and is still, 50-some weeks later, lingering in the top 40. Thrift Shop... his anthem about materialism and making due with the cash in your pocket, is undoubtedly fit for modern austere times.
His independently-released album, The Heist with adorable (according to my boyfriend) producer Ryan Lewis, then went on to yield another #1 smash, 'Can't Hold Us' about his refusal to sell out his music to a parasitic corporate music industry. Yes, my friends, we have a class warrior here.
But, as much as I love these songs, it was his 3rd single off of The Heist, 'Same Love' that should galvanize him as a progressive hero. It didn't hit number one on the Pop charts (stalled at #11 for 5 weeks before sliding down) but has arguably had a bigger impact. It was originally released in mid-2012 as a single here in WA state during our Referendum 74 campaign for marriage equality, before The Heist and before Thrift Shop gave them the notoriety to have release an 'issue' single, a big risk for an emerging artist to take.
Virtually unknown guest vocalist Mary Lambert belts out the memorable mantra "I can't change, even if I tried, even if I wanted to..." And Macklemore raps his own confessions of self-doubt and later his certainty that gay rights should be just as important to the hip hop community as any other civil right. We heard it a lot around WA in 2012 and other states that considered marriage equality on the ballot in 2012. It was an incredible ode to equality from an unexpected source, the hip hop community. After the Ref 74 campaign victories, most chart observers assumed that was probably the end of Same Love on the local radio.
But when their first two #1 hits from The Heist left radio programmers digging for another single, and the U.S. Supreme Court overturned Prop 8, Same Love got it's second life. The rest is a storybook ending. Last week, Macklemore, Ryan Lewis and Mary Lambert received a Grammy nomination for Song of the Year for Same Love. In total, the duo garnered 7 nominations, but the prestigious Song of the Year nomination was clearly the one they savored the most last night, the final night of Macklemore's world tour and the 3rd consecutive sold out homecoming show at Seattle's Key Arena.
Mary Lambert sauntered out on stage as Macklemore rapped about his gay uncle, indifference and hate speech in the hip hop community directed at gays and lesbians. Not only were we treated to her powerful performance, but the entire sold out stadium joined her on the refrain. Most of these folks were young, teens and twenty somethings singing or rapping every word. Looking up 3 tiers of the sold out arena and seeing the impact their words and music have had, it is clear that hip hop has taken on part of the role that was once filled by the singer-songwriter Seeger types from generations ago.