#GROWING UP MACKLEMORE AND RYAN LEWIS FREE#
It’s a record unlike any you’ll hear in pop right now, a nine-minute, multi-part exploration of Haggerty’s guilt (“Thinking if they can’t, how can I breathe? / Thinking that they chant, what do I sing? / I want to take a stance, ’cause we are not free / And then I thought about it, we are not we”), the tangled, contradictory thinking of mainstream America and the acceptance that Haggerty is operating in a world set up in his favour (“Fake and so plastic, you’ve heisted the magic / You’ve taken the drums and the accent you rapped in”). It was the flashpoint moment of a journey that ended with the creation of White Privilege II, the final track of This Unruly Mess I’ve Made. It also caused Macklemore to think about what his place in all of this was, about whether his solidarity was desired, about on whose side a rapper who had profited from the power structure of systemic racism could legitimately claim to be. The decision caused protests across the US. On 24 November 2014, it was announced that Darren Wilson, the police officer who shot dead Michael Brown and sparked unrest in Ferguson, Missouri, would not face state criminal charges.
The criticism made Haggerty “shrivel up” and avoid the public eye. He wouldn’t make a mistake like that again, he decided, because he wouldn’t put himself out there.Īnd then something changed. And that creates a culture of people who are constantly in a place of calculation.”
So, you get more and more people afraid to truly put themselves out there. “If you make a mistake publicly, one that I’m still talking about two years later,” begins Haggerty, while Lewis giggles, “you realise that what the media chooses to highlight and create as the narrative lasts. ‘The tour requires every ounce of energy he can conserve’ – Macklemore playing the O2.
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