Instagram posts and interviews reveal his adornment of Gucci and expensive accessories like Louis Vuitton duffle bags and Rolex watches. However, he romanticizes overbuying and rocking used clothing without a mention of gentrification in “Thrift Shop.”Ĭonsidering the bigger picture, Macklemore attacks conspicuous consumption in his signature song, exclaiming “Fifty dollars for a T-shirt/ that’s just some ignorant bitch/ I call that getting swindled and pimped.” Explicitly mentioning the entrapments of buying Gucci, he cautions “Trying to get girls from a brand?/ Then you hella won’t.” By his own definition, Macklemore’s been swindled by the same systems and propaganda he so famously preached against. Since my initial middle-school musings on Macklemore’s more palatable (or at least, commercially successful) tracks, I have been able to identify the potential contradictions of his career and artistry.Īfter all, Macklemore is an A-list celebrity critiquing those who buy into and practice conspicuous consumption in songs like “Thrift Shop” and “Need to Know.” Conscious consumption is somewhat of an unusual position to advocate for in popular music, and bringing it up seems like an admirable undertaking.
Walking a fine line between saying and living it” Since stumbling upon his Grammy award-winning album, I have become much more familiar with Macklemore and his music, from the nostalgic tones of “Growing Up” and “Good Old Days” to the more bizarre sentiments of “Brad Pitt’s Cousin” and “How to Play the Flute.” I have taken on the shared philosophical weight of “This Unruly Mess I’ve Made” and observed his anecdotal reflections on childhood and religion in “Gemini”. Nevertheless, I found myself feeling a deep emotional connection to Macklemore’s philosophy of fighting for gay rights and battling inner demons throughout “The Heist”, a bizzare connection I could not explain with my middle-school mind. At the time that I first encountered “The Heist” as a relatively sheltered middle schooler, I hadn’t devoted a lot of time to thinking about those things. Human rights, substance abuse and consumption contribute to the central themes of the album. Before I experienced “Wing$,” I never contemplated why I preferred Nike over Under Armour. Prior to hearing “Thrift Shop,” Goodwill was only a place to donate clothes, not to buy them. I learned what “lean” meant after listening to “Otherside” and googling the abuse of cough syrup.
No one in my social circle was openly gay until I got to high school, but “Same Love” introduced me to and harnessed my empathy and support for same-sex marriage, an issue I had no connection to at the time. In my middle-school world of Little League softball and sleepovers, I found myself listening to Macklemore’s (and Ryan Lewis’s) discussion of addiction, greed and failure throughout the album “The Heist.” Tuning out my parents’ car ride conversations and team chatter on the bus rides to basketball games, I let my headphones become the vessel into Macklemore’s much darker musings about critical issues I had not yet realized or experienced.
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