New Music Review: Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - "The Heist"

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis - "The Heist", 4/5 Stars

The Heist, an album by Macklemore (Ben Haggerty) and producer Ryan Lewis, is the first hip-hop style album I’ve enjoyed in a long time.  The lyrics are affirmative, campaign against misogyny and homophobia, and generally return the genre to its roots of celebrating the common man, all while engaging in musical minimalist background instrumentation.  This album was their first major release and a brief history of that effort can be found here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=tNXWOl81mBE&list=UUXYRdIXDdeZIf816EWAr5zQ

The lyrics range from insisting that a “life lived for art is never a life wasted” in “Ten Thousand Hours.”  Unlike those who try to make a name for themselves on shows like X Factor or American Idol and claim they just want to make music, he’s been out in the world actually doing it.  He knows good and well that the system of American education has failed him and so many others, yet he is making his way in the world on his own terms.  There’s a certain nobility in that, insisting in “Make the Money” that “a true artist won’t be satisfied.”

He celebrates the lifestyle that led him to where he is today in tracks like “Thrift Store.”  While some might see this one as mocking the poor, anyone who has seen the music video knows it’s really about making the best of what you’ve got and maintaining your humanity, including the capacity for fun and charity, no matter the struggles life may present.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK8mJJJvaes  Indeed, he cautions against the tendency to focus on material things and the dangers they represent for urban youth when some are murdered even for imitation brand name items in “Wing$.”  He laments that “These Nikes help define me, but I’m trying to take mine off.”

In “Thin Line” and “White Walls” he points out the disparities between seemingly glamorous lifestyle portrayed in rap songs to the lived experience of rappers’ girlfriends and asks them whether or not it’s really worth it.  He thus impugns the entire rap industry demanding better treatment, both physical and rhetorical, for women.  His own past is acknowledged as somewhat neglectful, and he regrets that.  This song is a call for a better future which rejects the culture of alcoholism and drug use while hypocritically insisting upon religious identification with “broken hymns” and “prayers … soaked in gin” as he calls the universalized bar a “Neon Cathedral” and rues his relapse in “Starting Over.”

His insistence on maintaining shared humanity shines through again in “Same Love” where he expresses support for marriage equality, a measure which recently won passage in Macklemore’s home state of Washington.  http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hlVBg7_08n0   Macklemore admits he didn’t always think this way, that it was a process of requiring he reject teachings of his childhood church and of hip-hop culture as an adult.  Possibly the most important line here is “I might not be the same / But that’s not important / No freedom ‘til we’re equal / Damn right I support it” as he expresses support for his uncle who has been in a loving, committed same sex relationship for years.  The law is just one stage in an evolving society, “but it’s a damn good place to start.”

That underlying theme, shared humanity being more important than merely physical differences, shines throughout this album, even in tracks like “Cowboy” and “Castle” which are exercises in the delightfully absurd.  Hip-hop, and popular music generally, could use more albums like this one.  Though this effort has an overabundance of the melancholic and the wistful, it overall presents a full experience of humanity in a believable way so often absent from rap and hip-hop.  The realism is what sells Macklemore’s message. 

– J. Holder Bennett, KMA Music Historian

Tracklist:

1. Ten Thousand Hours (Feat. Lyndsey Starr)

2. Can't Hold Us (Feat. Ray Dalton)

3. Thrift Shop (Feat. Wanz)

4. Thin Line (Feat. Buffalo Madonna)

5. Same Love (Feat. Mary Lambert)

6. Make The Money

7. Neon Cathedral (Feat. Allen Stone)

8. BomBom (Feat. The Teaching)

9. White Walls (Feat. ScHoolboy Q, and Hollis)

10. Jimmy Lovine (Feat. Ab-Soul)

11. Wing$

12. A Wake (Feat. Evan Roman)

13. Gold (Feat. Eighty4 Fly)

14. Starting Over (Feat. Ben Bridwell)

15. Cowboy Boots

Deluxe Edition:

16. Castle

17. My Oh My

18. Victory Lap

A Lament for Lyrics: Why We Should Really Listen

Song lyrics are occasionally rather controversial, and rightly so as they have the capacity to inspire unthinking, emotional reactions in listeners.  This alone would be a good reason to pay attention to what comes out of artists’ mouths.  However, there are other cases, where there are no overt reactions, which can be equally dangerous.  Some lyrics seek to normalize aberrant or dangerous behaviors which can lead to listeners’ acceptance of the propositions involved as if they were healthy or normative.  What follows is a brief description of such songs in no particular order, taking examples from several different genres and artists to demonstrate that it is a universal concern.  If a parent is genuinely going to ask, “Won’t someone please think about the children?” then they need to be thinking about music, too.  This is not a call for censorship.  Artists are and ought to be free, as of right, to sing what they please.  It is, however, most emphatically a plea to parents and others concerned with child welfare to pay more attention to what young people are doing.

One recent hit is Justin Bieber’s “Beauty and a Beat” featuring Nikki Minaj.  In the fifty-first week of 2012, this song registered at #9 on the Hot 100 Billboard Charts in the US.  While his own portion is problematic, linking a woman’s desirability entirely to her physical appearance rather than any of her qualities as a person, it is Minaj’s lines which are the more troubling.  The main portion of her lines, “Justin.. Bieber, you know Imma hit 'em with the ether / Buns out, weiner, but I gotta keep an eye out for Selena / … beautiful confessions of the priest” indicate several dangerous possibilities.  First, she intends to drug Bieber with ether, an old fashioned anesthetic and occasionally used today as a recreational drug.  She then talks about playing with his “weiner,” keeping in mind that, though he is 18 years old as of this writing, he looks like a much younger person and could be a target of pseudo-ephebophilia.  This is a circumstance where the adult predates upon those who, though legally of age to consent, appear to be younger than that while not actually childlike in appearance.  By indicating that she must “keep an eye out for Selena [Gomez],” Minaj further indicates that rape is her only route to sex with Bieber because he is unlikely to be unfaithful.  Female-on-male rape, or, at minimum, female-on-male sexual abuse, is a very real phenomenon in our country and one that is even less talked about than the more “normal” male-on-female varieties.  Considering that less than half of female victims of sexual abuse report, it is unsurprising to learn that the numbers are smaller still for male victims.  Lastly, she is making light of the very real, and very traumatic, experiences of the young men abused by priests, effectively alleging that youth sexual abuse is part of the sacramental duties of the priesthood.  There is absolutely nothing about her lines in this song that contribute to its legitimate, if putative, artistic merit.  While I cannot speak for other parts of the country, these lines are routinely played on the air by various radio stations in the Dallas-Ft. Worth area of North Texas.  It is unlikely that many young people are registering these lines consciously.  That is precisely the source of danger: the subconscious absorption of an idea, time and again over the course of several weeks, that this dangerous behavior is acceptable.

This next one is billed as a Christmas song by Lady Gaga, “Christmas Tree,” featuring Space Cowboy.  In other songs, she has advocated for queer rights, third wave feminism, and other subjects some might consider controversial.  Those are legitimate topics of inquiry and disagreement, but one would think that burning Jews on Christmas was nigh-universally accepted as an affront to human dignity.  The lyrics are formally presented as “light you up with you on top,” but the pronunciation is clearly addressed to the Christmas tree as if a person and spoken as “light you up, a Jew on top.”  The intention is to make a less than oblique reference to a sexual position, itself potentially objectionable for young listeners, but that is not what is actually said by Space Cowboy.  The need for a more cautious screening process by producers and sound editors is clearly indicated as a solution to this problem.  I doubt either singer is antisemitic in any meaningful sense; merely that they should put as much care into how they say things as they put into what they say.

Last on our list of concerns is “Copperhead Road” by Steve Earl.  In the last part of the song, he talks about serving in Vietnam, coming home to grow drug plants, and having a flashback during a DEA raid due to PTSD.  His lyrics imply that the only people serving in the military were “white trash.”  He posits veteran drug use as a perfectly normal response.  Worst of all, he trivializes the very real problems caused by PTSD in troops in an era before its causes and effects were diagnosed in sufferers, to say nothing of the racist overtones of the entire verse.  Denigrating trauma-sufferers is just as bad as ignoring them, but implying that it directly affected everyone and did so in the same way is also a falsehood which can lead to misunderstanding and mistreatment from society.  These people, many of them drafted and forced to go to Vietnam, were met with vicious insults and even assaults from their fellow citizens, to say nothing of an initial refusal by the American government to treat their physical and psychological health concerns.  This song, a popular one for country line dancers, perpetuates the problem.

Each of these songs, from a different genre with different concerns, is indicative of a larger problem in American society.  Others may rant and rave about increasing violence or sexualization of children.  Those are valid concerns, surely, but they cannot be met without first paying attention to what happens in the world around us, including on the air waves.  My challenge to you, gentle reader, is to listen to and think about the words in your favorite songs and decide whether or not you would want young ones listening to them and absorbing their messages that normalize rape, antisemitism, and PTSD.

– J. Holder Bennett, KMA Music Historian 

We The Ghost, "White Noise". 5/5 Stars

Tulsa Oklahoma’s (unless they come back to Texas, cough) “We The Ghost” pulls comparisons to a rather fun grouping of artists, from One-Republic to Travie McCoy, but somehow retains a unique hold on their overall sound. They portray the full spectrum of emotions, be they love or hate, yet do so in a way which conveys a strong understanding and clear acceptance of the subjects. They aren’t writing these things because they know it will sell, and they don’t have to shove it in your face either, because they’ve lived it in some form. This is one of the best compliments I can personally give a band, you can tell they truly feel what they’ve written; it has more impact than whether a track is a masterpiece or even a simple television jingle. I feel this every time I listen to WTG, and they’ve successfully carried that mentality into “White Noise”.

Their first single from the release, “Let Me Know”, starts the collection off well, and if I’m not mistaken has had a little work done on the EQ to make certain aspects pop a bit more, but as I listen further, I discover it’s only the tip of the iceberg, and it continually gets better from that point. The tracks are primarily violin driven which plays nicely against Mr. Tyler’s textured vocals and brings an even more heightened feeling to the already powerful content of the tracks. As Gotye put it, “you can get addicted to a certain kind of sadness”. The album does have a rather sad feeling to it, but I still can’t stop listening. That feeling culminates in the closing track “Kiss Kiss Bang Bang” (Mentioned previously in our interview here: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=dFXxUezOvis ), a poignant story of abuse from the perspective of the abuser, whom holds a somewhat chilling indifference to the situation overall, and you can’t help but find a kind of sadness there for this individual who has become so jaded.

To clarify, this is not a full length album but a five track EP, however, it manages to hold the strength of an entire release. If this is genuinely “White Noise”, it may be time to redefine the term, because by current standards, the EP is anything but.

Tracklist:

1. Let Me Know

2. Notice Me (Feat. Ben Kilgore)

3. Wash These Sins Away (Feat. Rockwell Ripperger of Stephen Speaks)

4. Drama Scene (Explicit)

5. Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (Explicit)

Facebook: http://www.facebook.com/wetheghost

Official Website: http://www.wetheghost.com/