Music/Society Modern Wrld (W7)

A Love Song for All of Us?: Macklemore’s “Same Love” and the Myth of Black Homophobia

LAURON KEHRER

Abstract According to the New York Times, white rapper Macklemore and his DJ partner Ryan Lewis’s “Same Love” was “the first song to explicitly embrace and promote gay marriage that has made it into the Top 40.”1 In 2013, as the Supreme Court of the United States prepared to rule on challenges to the Federal Defense of Marriage Act and California’s Proposition 8, which banned same-sex marriage, the track quickly climbed the charts and became a nationally recognized anthem for marriage equality. Despite this generally positive reception, however, the song does not reflect all queer-identified listeners. Macklemore raps, “If I were gay, I would think hip hop hates me,” an assertion that positions black communities as a significant threat to (white) LGBTQ rights. Much like the backlash against black voters following the 2008 passing of Proposition 8, this claim relies on an invented black pathology that locates homo- phobia in black American culture specifically rather than American culture at large. This art- icle offers a close reading and contextualization of “Same Love” and demonstrates that, rather than combating homophobia in hip hop, Macklemore’s lyrical claims actually bolster his stra- tegic performance as a socially and politically aware white rapper, while erasing queer and trans hip hop artists of color from the discourse.

On January 26, 2014, rapper–producer duo Macklemore and Ryan Lewis performed their pro-marriage equality hit “Same Love” with guest artists Mary Lambert, Madonna, and Trombone Shorty at the fifty-sixth annual Grammy Awards show. As part of the performance, Queen Latifah officiated the legal marriage of thirty- three couples, many of whom were gay and lesbian. Latifah introduced the segment by stating, “This song is a love song not for some of us, but for all of us,” setting the stage for a performance and ceremony that featured couples that promoters touted as “gay, straight, old, young, of many races and many colors.”2

While many lauded the performance as a powerful pro-marriage equality state- ment, others found it highly problematic. It provoked criticism not only from reli- gious conservatives who opposed the song’s message, but also from members of the

1 James C. McKinley Jr., “Stars Align for a Gay Marriage Anthem,” New York Times, June 30, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/arts/music/stars-align-for-a-gay-marriage-anthem.html?_r=0. Portions of this work were read as a conference paper at the annual meeting of the Society for

American Music in Boston in 2016. I am grateful to those audience members who provided thoughtful insights and questions that helped guide my continued work on this topic. Many thanks are due also to Loren Kajikawa, Amanda Sewell, Lisa Jakelski, Maria Cristina Fava, and Sarah Fuchs Sampson, among others, who also offered valuable feedback and helped shape my thinking at various stages of this pro- ject. I also wish to thank the Susan B. Anthony Institute for Gender, Sexuality, and Women’s Studies at the University of Rochester for funding that supported this work.

2 Ben Sisario, “Grammys to Feature On-Air Weddings of 34 Couples,” New York Times, “ArtsBeat” (blog), January 26, 2014, http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/2014/01/26/grammys-wedding-macklemore- ryan-lewis-queen-latifah/?_php=true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&hpw&rref=arts&_r=2. Macklemore and Ryan Lewis performing at the 2014 Grammy Awards broadcast, YouTube, January 28, 2014, https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=MRdn7u-sTfA.

Journal of the Society for American Music (2018), Volume 12, Number 4, pp. 425–448 © The Society for American Music 2018 doi:10.1017/S1752196318000354

425

LGBTQ (Lesbian, Gay, Bisexual, Transgender, and Queer) community.3 Writing for thegloss.com, Julia Sonenshein faulted the performance for positioning the hetero- sexual Macklemore as a savior figure for LGBTQ causes (almost literally so, as he stood on stage with neon church windows behind him). She rightly noted that Macklemore, due to his sexual orientation, benefited from rapping about homopho- bia without ever having to experience it himself.4 These criticisms echo those voiced by openly queer black rapper Le1f, who, in a series of tweets blasting Macklemore after his appearance at the 2013 MTV Video Music Awards, asked, “do any proceeds go to any gay people? The HRC [Human Rights Campaign]? Aids [sic] foundation? Or does this straight white man keep the money?”5 Macklemore and Lewis did con- tribute some of the proceeds from “Same Love” to Washington United for Marriage, but since that state legalized same-sex marriage in 2012, it is unclear if the proceeds from subsequent performances have gone to other groups organizing for LGBTQ rights. While the white, heterosexual Macklemore receives recognition and high- profile performance opportunities, queer, black rappers such as Le1f are largely left out of the spotlight.6 Audiences largely reward Macklemore for his LGBTQ ally- ship but have yet to embrace actual LGBTQ artists on a large-scale level. It is there- fore understandable that some critics would hold Macklemore’s performances and activism to a high standard of accountability. For many listeners, “Same Love,” and especially the performance of this track on

the Grammy stage, highlighted tensions between mainstream white LGBTQ activ- ism and communities of color. Although the broadcast amplified Macklemore’s pro-LGBTQ message, allowing him to reach a large audience, it also helped dissem- inate his critiques of hip hop, which draw on rhetoric often used by proponents for marriage equality that creates a false dichotomy between black and LGBTQ com- munities and erases queer and trans people of color from the discourse. Macklemore is a white male rapper who achieved mainstream success with his

and Lewis’s 2012 debut studio album, The Heist.7 Unlike his white predecessors,

3 In an article posted at christiantoday.com, Jennifer Jones cites examples of tweeted responses to the performance, including complaints about Macklemore’s characterization of Christians and the perceived leftist agenda of the presentation. See Jennifer Jones, “Natalie Grant responds after leaving Grammys early; Mass wedding at award show criticized as ‘political stunt’ to push gay marriage agenda,” Christian Today, January 29, 2014, http://www.christiantoday.com/article/mass.wedding.at. 2014.grammys.criticized.as.political.stunt.to.push.gay.marriage.agenda.natalie.grant.responds.after. early.exit/35586.htm.

4 Julia Sonenshein, “ATTENTION HOMOSEXUALS: It’s Finally Okay to Be Gay!” thegloss.com, January 27, 2014, http://www.thegloss.com/2014/01/27/culture/macklemore-grammys-same-love- madonna/.

5 Le1f, tweet posted August 25, 2013, cited by James Nichols, “Le1f, Gay Rapper, Blasts Macklemore for ‘Same Love’ Success,” Huffington Post, August 26, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost. com/2013/08/29/le1f-gay-rapper-blasts-macklemore_n_3836703.html.

6 The latter’s March 2014 appearance on the Late Show with David Letterman show is a very rare exception, and it failed to generate additional high-profile performances on par with Macklemore’s.

7 For the purposes of this study I focus on Macklemore, the MC-half of the duo Macklemore and Ryan Lewis. While Lewis’s contributions as producer are important to understanding the racial and gender politics of the duo’s output, Macklemore has been the most outspoken in his approach to social justice issues and has been the primary speaker in interviews and on social media. Because his position as MC has made him the most visible and verbal of the two musicians, I believe audiences have responded more strongly to Macklemore than to his partner.

426 Kehrer

who have navigated their racial identity either through their class status or through a notion of racial and musical transcendence, Macklemore presents himself as self- consciously aware of his own position within black hip hop culture and as commit- ted to socially progressive causes.8 However, his biggest commercial hits, which have reached a wide mainstream audience, demonstrate ways in which his own racial identity compromises his critiques of certain aspects of hip hop, such as its per- ceived homophobia and glorification of materialism. While Macklemore engages with tropes of hip hop authenticity in order to present himself as an insider to the culture, he also positions himself as an outsider by offering a critique of the genre that echoes white mainstream concerns that hip hop and, by extension, black communities are inherently more homophobic than white-dominated music genres and the white communities that produce them. In this essay, I offer a reading of “Same Love” that highlights some of the fissures within the mainstream LGBTQ movement, and I examine the track’s relationship to the racially divisive rhetoric frequently used by white LGBTQ activists in the context of marriage equal- ity. Ultimately, “Same Love” illustrates ways in which Macklemore’s navigation of white privilege through LGBTQ activism further perpetuates harmful myths about race, sexuality, and hip hop music. The role of white hip hop practitioners and fans is a hotly contested issue both

within and outside the hip hop community. Multi-ethnic youth of color living in the Afro-Caribbean, African American, and Latinx neighborhoods of the Bronx, New York City first developed hip hop culture, whose original elements include rap- ping (also referred to as MCing or emceeing), DJing, dancing and graffiti art, in the 1970s.9 When rap entered the American mainstream in the 1980s and 1990s, its multi-ethnic roots were somewhat obscured as it came to represent an expression of blackness, especially a particular kind of black masculinity.10

In fact, rap is one of the few, if not only genres of American popular music that crossed into the white mainstream without becoming visibly white, and yet it has not been immune to co-optation.11 Some of rap’s most commercially successful artists have been white stars, including the Beastie Boys, Vanilla Ice, and Eminem, and their successes have often been recognized by predominantly white institutions, such as the Grammys, in ways that black artists’ have not. For example, Bakari Kitwana points out that much of the backlash against Eminem from hip hop insiders had to do with the commercial impact of his success on black artists:

8 See especially Young Pap, “Macklemore Joins The Great Race Debate on Ebro in the Morning,” video, Hot 97 (WQHT-FM, New York), December 29, 2014, http://www.hot97.com/news/new-hot97/ macklemore-joins-great-race-debate-ebro-morning-video. For additional studies on ways in which white rappers have negotiated their white identities in the context of the black music genre of hip hop, see Loren Kajikawa, Sounding Race in Rap Songs (Oakland: University of California Press, 2015); and Miles White, From Jim Crow to Jay-Z: Race, Rap and the Performance of Masculinity (Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011).

9 Joseph G. Schloss, Foundation: B-Boys, B-Girls and Hip-Hop Culture in New York (Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009), 4–5.

10 Kajikawa, Sounding Race in Rap Songs, 5. 11 Kajikawa, Sounding Race in Rap Songs, 5.

A Love Song for All of Us? 427

The problem here is not simply that Eminem is white and can rap—but that he’s white, can rap so well, has received honor after honor as a rap great by the entertainment establishment (two Grammys for Slim Shady and three for Marshall Mathers) and that for thirty years hip-hop has been almost exclusively associated with Black Americans. . . . It is not unpre- cedented in America’s white supremacist culture for mediocre whites who perform as well as Blacks, in an area dominated by Blacks, to find themselves elevated through the stratosphere.12

In addition to the increased mainstream attention their race often affords them, in their attempt to lay claim to hip hop’s black masculine authenticity, white male rap- pers often invoke the worst stereotypes of black men, which are thus perpetuated through their aforementioned commercial success. Miles White argues that, for example, the Beastie Boys used “black music to act out for white audiences the bru- tish stereotypes of lewdness and violence historically associated with black males,” despite the white rappers’ middle-class upbringings.13 As I demonstrate elsewhere, white women rappers Iggy Azalea and former members of the White Girl Mob similarly enact notions of “rachetness” to resist respectability and position them- selves in proximity to blackness in order to offer more “authentic” rap perfor- mances.14 While not all white rappers engage in performances that suggest their understandings of blackness hinge on exaggerated and negative stereotypes, they all must negotiate their racial identities within a music genre that “maintains its symbolic connection with the black underclass, specifically urban youth.”15 Given the dissonance between commercial rap’s common narratives of struggle over inter- sectional racism and poverty and the lived experiences of white rappers who, regard- less of class background, do not experience racial oppression, these performers must navigate their whiteness in ways that allow them to appear genuine, or “real” to hip hop audiences while also relating to the accepted aesthetics of the genre and avoid- ing the pitfalls of cultural appropriation.16 Macklemore’s strategy for navigating his whiteness includes a politically-conscious approach that incorporates pro-LGBTQ activism, but one that ignores the historical and contemporary overlap between hip hop, queer identity, and black experiences in the United States.

12 Bakari Kitwana, Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop: Wankstas, Wiggers, Wannabes, and the New Reality of Race in America (New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2005), 139–40.

13 White, From Jim Crow to Jay-Z, 100. 14 Lauron Kehrer, “White Women Rappers Get Ratchet: Iggy Azalea, White Girl Mob, and

Cultural Appropriation in Hip-Hop,” in “Beyond Beyoncé: Intersections of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Contemporary American Hip-Hop ca. 2010–2016” (PhD diss., University of Rochester, 2017), 58–104.

15 Dana Gorzelany-Mostak, “Keepin’ It Real (Respectable) in 2008: Barack Obama’s Music Strategy and the Formation of Presidential Identity,” in the Journal of the Society for American Music 10, no. 2 (May 2016): 113–48, 117. While Gorzelany-Mostak cites some of Murray Forman’s recent articles on hip-hop in the Obama era, this observation recalls his extensive work on the relation- ship between rap and hip hop and place and locality; see Murray Forman, The ’Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2002).

16 Kajikawa, Sounding Race in Rap Songs; Edward G. Armstrong, “Eminem’s Construction of Authenticity,” Popular Music and Society 27, no. 2 (2004): 335–55; and Mickey Hess, Is Hip Hop Dead? The Past, Present, and Future of America’s Most Wanted Music (Westport:, CT Praeger Publishers, 2007).

428 Kehrer

Articulating White Privilege

To better understand the way in which Macklemore negotiates his whiteness within hip hop, let’s consider “A Wake,” one of the tracks from The Heist, an album col- laboration with producer and fellow Seattle-based artist Ryan Lewis. This mid- tempo track, which features singer–songwriter Evan Roman, would sound as if it belonged on a pop record were it not for Macklemore’s rapped verses. Over a drum, bass, and synthesizer instrumental reminiscent of 1980s synthpop, he raps about shifting generational issues such as safe sex practices and drug use and abuse. In the second verse, however, he begins by acknowledging how fans and music critics praise his music in contrast to mainstream hip hop:

They say it’s so refreshing to hear somebody on records No guns, no drugs, no sex, just truth The guns that’s America, the drugs are what they gave to us And sex sells itself, don’t judge ’til it’s you

He then turns his attention to ongoing racial inequalities in the United States and situates himself as a self-aware white rapper who is concerned about racial inequal- ity, mentioning Reaganomics, Ice T’s “Cop Killer,” and the beating of Rodney King and the ensuing L.A. uprising. He continues:

Don’t even tweet, R.I.P Trayvon Martin Don’t wanna be that white dude, million man marchin’ Fighting for our freedom that my people stole Don’t wanna make all my white fans uncomfortable

Macklemore suggests that the topics he addresses in his songs contrast to those found in mainstream hip hop (outside of the subgenre of conscious rap) and that his lyrical approach invites a large crossover audience, not necessarily the music’s pop sound. However, he also contextualizes his own position as a white rapper in a historical and contemporary moment of police brutality and racism. His strategy is to present himself as self-consciously aware of his whiteness and the privilege that it entails while also demonstrating that he advocates for racial justice through the mode of hip hop. Macklemore’s negotiation of his white identity and, to a lesser extent, class status

in a black music genre contrasts with strategies employed by another famous white rapper, Eminem, who rose to fame a decade earlier. Unlike Macklemore, Eminem initially shied away from discussions of white privilege and racial justice, instead focusing on rearticulating his own racial and class identity in order to position him- self as someone at a disadvantage within hip hop. Drawing on Mickey Hess’s models of navigating whiteness in hip hop, Loren Kajikawa argues that in his breakout album The Slim Shady LP (1999) Eminem employed a strategy of “inversion” to negotiate his racial identity in the rap world.17 Rather than attempting to transcend

17 Kajikawa, “Eminem’s ‘My Name Is’: Signifying Whiteness, Rearticulating Race” in Journal of the Society for American Music 3, no. 3 (August 2009): 341–63.

A Love Song for All of Us? 429

race or ignore it, as he did with his first unsuccessful album, Eminem began to address his own whiteness directly in a way that rendered himself legible to a rap audience. Kajikawa writes:

Parodying common understandings of whiteness, Eminem advanced a white identity both at ease with black culture and humble before it. He also emphasized the contradictions in whiteness, particularly with respect to class, allowing him to recast himself as the ultimate underdog.18

Eminem’s approach allowed him to acknowledge his whiteness and avoid being seen as an imitator of black rappers or an oppressive appropriator of hip hop culture. As Kajikawa argues, this particular strategy engaged with and reflected evolving notions of whiteness during the 1990s.19

Like Eminem, Macklemore openly acknowledges his white identity in his music, but his position reflects the changing racial climate of the 2010s. In referencing gen- trification of black neighborhoods and the 2012 killing of Florida teen Trayvon Martin, whose death sparked renewed national protests against rampant violence towards unarmed black men and youth, Macklemore demonstrates his own cogni- zance of persistent racial inequality. It is worth noting that during his time as an undergraduate at The Evergreen State College, Macklemore volunteered with incar- cerated youth at the Green Hill School, a maximum-security juvenile detention facility where he ran workshops on writing and performing raps.20 He attributes this experience with exposing him to many of the racial injustices of the prison sys- tem, and to sparking his awareness of racial difference more generally. Rather than situate himself as an activist for social justice and offer a call-to-arms, in “A Wake” Macklemore offers a glimpse into the self-conscious awareness he has as a white citi- zen who bears witness to institutional racism such as that he observed during his work with incarcerated youth. His verses articulate both a desire to create racial equality, but also an acknowledgement that he is the beneficiary of institutionalized racism and the discomfort such knowledge brings. It is a nuanced approach in which Macklemore positions himself as a self-aware white rapper who is attentive to the political repercussions of his own choices, both musical and otherwise.21

Although Macklemore articulates a racial self-awareness in “A Wake,” that level of nuance is largely absent from his most commercially successful songs. For example, “Thrift Shop,” The Heist’s fifth single, illustrates a more problematic inter- play of race and class in Macklemore’s self-fashioning. “Thrift Shop” topped both the Billboard Hot 100 and Rap Songs charts in early 2013, making Macklemore and Lewis only the second independent artists to ever reach the number-one spot on the Hot 100, a feat that extended their fan base from a limited local audience to a widespread, national one.22 The upbeat track, which uses a buoyant saxophone

18 Kajikawa, “Eminem’s ‘My Name Is,’” 347. 19 Kajikawa, “Eminem’s ‘My Name Is,’” 342. 20 Carolyn Shea, “Behind the Awesome,” The Evergreen Magazine, Spring 2013, http://www.ever-

green.edu/magazine/2013spring/behind-the-awesome.htm. 21 Shea, “Behind the Awesome.” 22 Gary Trust, “Macklemore & Ryan Lewis Crown Hot 100, Justin Timberlake Soars to Top 5,”

Billboard, January 23, 2013, http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/1521657/macklemore-ryan-

430 Kehrer

riff and features Wanz (the stage name of the Seattle-based singer Michael Wansley) performing the catchy hook, finds Macklemore embracing the hipster moment as he raps about finding sartorial treasures in second-hand stores. He raps: “I’ll take those flannel zebra jammies, second hand, I rock that motherfucker / The built-in onesies with the socks on that motherfucker.” Wanz’s hook, “I’m gonna pop some tags / Only got twenty dollars in my pocket / I’m hunting, looking for a come-up / This is fucking awesome,” succinctly captures the joy and cost-effectiveness of thrift shopping that permeates the song. As Macklemore lists and celebrates his Goodwill finds, however, he also critiques

the name-brand consumerism that is frequently associated with hip hop culture:

They be like, “Oh, that Gucci—that’s hella tight.” I’m like, “Yo - that’s fifty dollars for a T-shirt.” Limited edition, let’s do some simple addition Fifty dollars for a T-shirt—that’s just some ignorant bitch shit

Macklemore never mentions hip hop by name, but as he himself has acknowledged in interviews, the track pushes back against the glorification of wealth and materi- alism found in much mainstream rap. In an interview for National Public Radio, which is not particularly known for having an audience that overlaps with hip hop fans but which does reach a wide listener base, he states: “Hip-hop is usually an art form that is about bling, consumption . . . it’s usually about spending money.”23

Of course, Macklemore is not the first rapper to confront hip hop’s materialism, whether real or perceived. Anti-materialism is a common trope found in tracks by black conscious rappers such as the Roots, Common, Yasiin Bey (Mos Def), and Poor Righteous Teachers, to name just a few.24 However, while this upbeat track might be understood as a socially conscious challenge to consumerist hip hop cul- ture, it is also a problematic critique not only because it features a white rapper criti- cizing behaviors largely associated with a black music genre (that have already been critiqued by black artists), but it fails also to acknowledge the difference between choosing to buy clothing second hand because it fits a certain aesthetic or being required to because there are no other economically viable options. As music critic Brandon Soderberg writes, Macklemore’s performance “stinks of privilege.”25 He explains:

lewis-crown-hot-100-justin-timberlake-soars-to-top-5; Nolan Feeney, “Macklemore’s ‘Thrift Shop’ Is First Indie Hit to Top Charts in Nearly Two Decades,” Time, January 25, 2013, http://newsfeed.time. com/2013/01/25/macklemores-thrift-shop-is-first-indie-hit-to-top-charts-in-nearly-two-decades/.

23 Macklemore, in interview with Celeste Headlee, “Macklemore’s Brand of Socially Conscious Rap,” NPR, November 23, 2012, http://www.npr.org/2012/11/23/165667816/macklemores-brand-of- socially-conscious-rap.

24 Felicia M. Miyakawa notes that not only are anti-materialist lyrics typical of conscious hip hop, but they are especially common in Islamic rap. See Felicia M. Miyakawa, Five Percenter Rap: God Hop’s Music, Message, and Black Muslim Mission (Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005), 70.

25 Brandon Soderberg, “Stop Saying Nice Things About Macklemore’s ‘Thrift Shop,’” Spin, January 24, 2013, http://www.spin.com/2013/01/stop-saying-nice-things-about-macklemores-thrift- shop/.

A Love Song for All of Us? 431

There is . . . a corny R. Kelly joke, and a point where he pitches his vocal down to sound like a black dude and calls himself a “honky.” Not to mention, the implicit message of this rap song is that “Thrift Shop” is not like all that other gauche hip-hop about ballin’ and champagne- poppin’, blah blah blah.

[I] Probably shouldn’t have to explain this in 2013, but when you didn’t have to wear hand-me-down threads or thrift-shop clothes your whole life, there’s a novelty to wearing them in your 20s so you have some extra beer money. And hey, maybe you even feel like you’re getting one over on a world of American Apparel–wearers by spending $2.99 on an already-worn-in colored T-shirt, but well, fall back. And that’s not even the point. The dynamic that this is a song rejecting conspicuous consumption is, for the most part, pro- jected by its listeners. Macklemore’s embrace of the thrift shop is exclusively for wacky outfits to get him attention at parties, as well as something to lord over his peers in Gucci. He is, in the hierarchy of people poring over cheap-ass clothes in the Goodwill, only slightly above jerks who go there for Halloween outfits. At the top of this hierarchy, of course, are people who don’t have enough money to buy new clothes.26

While the interview cited above demonstrates Macklemore’s perpetuation of the idea that this song is a rejection of consumerist culture, Soderberg is right to point out that Macklemore’s main benefit from thrift shopping, as per the song lyrics, is not saving money, but rather attention from others, especially women. Had Macklemore grown up in an economic situation that required, rather than allowed, him to stock his wardrobe primarily with second-hand items, Soderberg posits, it would not hold the same allure. Instead, Macklemore makes an aesthetic choice that allows him to position himself as a moral authority on consumerist hip hop culture. In addition to the thinly veiled critiques of hip hop culture, “Thrift Shop” also

includes a self-referential nod to Macklemore’s whiteness. In the first verse, he raps: “Ice on the fringe, it’s so damn frosty / That people like, ‘Damn! That’s a cold-ass honkey.’” As Soderberg points out, in the recording Macklemore lowers the pitch on his own vocal so that what we hear, and imagine is a black man, is really Macklemore himself. In the video for “Thrift Shop,” it is indeed a black man who points towards Macklemore off-screen and appears to be saying the line, a sort of blackface performance by proxy. This use of a derogatory slur for white people is indicative of Macklemore’s approach of acknowledging his whiteness in a hip hop context while at the same time criticizing aspects of the genre, including its emphasis on consumerism and its homophobia.

“Same Love” and the Myth of Black Homophobia

As “Thrift Shop” and “A Wake” both demonstrate, Macklemore’s strategic self- conscious awareness of his own racial identity has helped him navigate a genre that values above all else the notion of “keepin’ it real.” However, his self- acknowledged white privilege (and unacknowledged class privilege) has helped him achieve a certain status in the music industry from which he can reach a very large audience. Coming from this place of privilege, some of his critiques are framed in such a way that they perpetuate negative myths about black communities

26 Soderberg, “Stop Saying Nice Things about Macklemore’s ‘Thrift Shop,’” emphasis in original.

432 Kehrer

and erase the work of hip hop artists of color who are further marginalized because they are queer. Regardless of his actual intentions, whether to simply self-promote his work, to sincerely help marginalized groups, or some combination thereof, Mackelmore’s music does not have a uniformly positive impact. The negative reper- cussions of his approach stem from a lack of intersectional understanding in his cri- tiques of hip hop, especially regarding both its real or perceived materialism and homophobia, and they are most clearly illustrated in his and Lewis’s most recogniz- able track, the hit single “Same Love.” The fourth single from The Heist, “Same Love,” was recorded as part of the Music

for Marriage Equality Project that worked to approve Washington State’s Referendum 74, which legalized same-sex marriage in that state.27 As mentioned above, the duo donated much of the proceeds from the song to the advocacy group Washington United for Marriage.28 Following that successful campaign, “Same Love” rose up the charts in 2013 as the Supreme Court prepared to rule on challenges to the federal Defense of Marriage Act, and quickly became a nation- ally recognized anthem for marriage equality and LGBTQ rights.29 American rock critic Robert Christgau wrote that the track was “the best gay marriage song to date in any genre and as corny as it damn well oughta be,” implying that it was sentimen- tal in a way that might move listeners.30 Writing for A.V. Club, Chris Mincher described the song as a “refreshing” reminder that “hip-hop can be an effective tool in advocating social transformation,” problematically suggesting that other contemporary hip hop singles were apolitical.31 The New York Times noted that “Same Love” was “the first song to explicitly embrace and promote gay marriage that has made it into the Top 40,” indicating that unlike so-called gay anthems such as Lady Gaga’s 2011 hit single, “Born This Way,” Macklemore and Lewis’s track actually named marriage equality and LGBTQ rights as its focal point.32

27 Leanne Naramore, “Hip-Hop’s Macklemore x Ryan Lewis Release Beautiful Video for ‘Same Love,’” Human Rights Campaign, October 3, 2012, http://www.hrc.org/blog/entry/hip-hops-mackle- more-x-ryan-lewis-release-beautiful-video-for-same-love.

28 McKinley, “Stars Align.” 29 McKinley, “Stars Align.” 30 Robert Christgau, “Customer Guide Review: Macklemore & Ryan Lewis,” Robert Christgau—Dean

of American Rock Critics (website), http://www.robertchristgau.com/get_artist.php?name=macklemore. 31 Chris Mincher, “Macklemore & Lewis’ ‘Same Love’ is more than a pro-gay marriage anthem,”

A.V. Club, January 24, 2014, http://www.avclub.com/article/macklemore-amp-lewis-same-love-is- more-than-a-pro--200929. In citing Jay-Z as an example of an artist who, rather than rapping about civil rights, released songs centered on expressions of his wealth, Mincher fails to recognize that black wealth is in itself a political topic because of the historical and contemporary economic dis- enfranchisement of black people in the United States. Although songs featuring conspicuous spending and party themes may have dominated the rap charts in the previous year (such as Drake’s “The Motto,” Kirko Bangz’s “Drank In My Cup,” and Tyga’s “Rack City”), as Justin A. Burton notes, “Partying, enjoying yourself, when the world intends you to suffer can be a powerful political activity,” see Justin A Burton, Posthuman Rap (New York: Oxford University Press, 2017), 109. Additionally, despite the fact that this article was presented in the lead-up to the 2014 Grammys, Mincher neglected to mention that The Heist was released in the same year as Kendrick Lamar’s good kid, m.A.A.d. city, a concept album very much steeped in themes relating to racial and class disparities in the American urban landscape and that had also been nominated in the Album of the Year category.

32 McKinley, “Stars Align.”

A Love Song for All of Us? 433

The track’s breakthrough on the Billboard Top 40 charts followed the success of the duo’s “Thrift Shop” and “Can’t Hold Us,” all of which fit comfortably in the sonic realm of pop as well as hip hop and R&B genres, even if they were not mar- keted as such by promoters.33 Macklemore and Lewis’s crossover appeal can be at least partly attributed to their music’s sonic characteristics, which share a pop aes- thetic with other chart-topping hip hop and R&B tracks of that summer.34 “Same Love” opens with a held chord, reminiscent of the opening of a church hymn. A hesitant-sounding piano introduction enters over this chord, closely followed by delicate string tremolos. These sounds then drop out to make space for the opening piano melody, based on the beginning of the 1965 single “People Get Ready,” a gospel-tinged R&B track written by Curtis Mayfield and initially performed by the Impressions. It is not until about halfway through Mackelmore’s first verse that the beat (which consists of soft drum-set sonorities) is added, and it remains tertiary to the song’s melodic and lyrical content. Indeed, the instruments used, especially the sustained organ chord and melodic piano, suggest churches and sub- urban spaces rather than the landscapes often invoked in commercial rap, such as the hip hop club or city streets. The inclusion of the melody from “People Get Ready,” a song very much rooted in African American freedom song traditions and which features Underground Railroad imagery, invokes comparisons between the mid-century civil rights movement for racial equality and the contemporary mainstream LGBTQ rights movement.35

33 Eric Weisbard notes that the promoters of “Thrift Shop” “first targeted alternative rock, then rhythmic Top 40, and then mainstream Top 40,” and that the song “in no way sought to belong to R&B as a format—and by extension to the R&B format’s privileging of black listeners,” see Eric Weisbard, Top 40 Democracy: The Rival Mainstreams of American Music (Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014), 262. This may or may not have been Macklemore and Lewis’s decision, but it does speak to the way their sonic approach combined with their racial identities to allow them to pur- sue radio formats beyond those focused on black music genres and black listeners.

34 For example, the only other hip hop songs on the Top 40 during the week of June 29, 2013, when “Same Love” reached the number 33 position, were Macklemore and Lewis’s own “Can’t Hold Us” and “Thrift Shop” (numbers 3 and 19, respectively); “Power Trip” by J. Cole featuring Miguel at 21; Wale’s “Bad” (featuring Tiara Thomas or Rihanna) at 23; Drake’s “Started From The Bottom” at 35; “U.O.E.N.O.” by Rocko featuring Future and Rick Ross at 36; and Lil Wayne featuring 2 Chainz, “Rich as F**k” at 38. Most of these songs were similarly pop crossovers. At the top of the hip hop and R&B singles for that same week was the pop-chart topper “Blurred Lines” by white singer Robin Thicke featuring T.I. and Pharrell. Rap that did not share pop elements were relegated to much lower positions on the Billboard charts.

35 As Joseph G. Schloss argues, samples in hip hop are not necessarily used to make particular intertextual references; more often, producers or DJs use samples that are obscure and thus harder for the average listener to identify, see Schloss, Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop (Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2004). In “Same Love,” however, the borrowed melody, or quotation, is not an electronic sample but rather is performed on an acoustic instrument, and is easily recognizable, thereby invoking a historical reference to music of the civil rights era. The sonic comparisons between that period and the contemporary LGBTQ marriage equality movement are further supported in Mackelmore’s lyrics. This technique is similar to one that Amanda Sewell has identified in the music of Public Enemy, who, she argues, also use samples to frame historical refer- ences that support lyrics, see Amanda Sewell, “Paul’s Boutique and Fear of a Black Planet: Digital Sampling and Musical Style in Hip Hop,” Journal of the Society for American Music 8, no. 1 (2014): 28–48; 38.

434 Kehrer

Macklemore begins his first verse with a personal story about growing up with stereotypical ideas about what it means to be gay, revealing that while he himself is straight, he has a gay uncle. He finishes the verse with a critique of religious and political conservatives for their anti-gay positions:

America the brave still fears what we don’t know And “God loves all his children” is somehow forgotten But we paraphrase a book written thirty-five hundred years ago

Additional references to anti-gay sentiment in churches recur throughout the track. In the second verse, for example, he raps, “It’s the same hate that’s caused wars from religion,” and “When I was at church they taught me something else / If you preach hate at the service those words aren’t anointed / That holy water that you soak in has been poisoned.” The critique of religion, or more accurately, the homophobic use of religion and religious rhetoric, is particularly apt here as the campaign against Referendum 74 was heavily championed by religious organizations such as the state’s three Catholic dioceses.36

The emotional power of the track hinges in large part on the hook provided by Seattle-based queer singer–songwriter Mary Lambert, who sings, “And I can’t change / Even if I tried/ Even if I wanted to / My love my love my love/ She keeps me warm.”37 While this chorus is a touching cry for acceptance (both from self and from others), it also reinforces the idea that homosexuality or queerness is not a learned behavior or constructed identity but rather an inherent, possibly genetic trait such as hair or eye color. This claim has been used since the earliest gay rights movements in the United States as a plea for equal treatment.38 This line of reasoning assumes that if queer people cannot help how they were born, if homosexuality is not a choice, then they constitute a protected class that the US gov- ernment and other institutions must treat equally under the law. This argument stems from similar methods used by some civil rights activists, who suggest that because people of color have no control over the race into which they were born, it is both morally and legally unfair to treat them differently than white people. As we shall see, this connection, which Macklemore himself makes in lines such as, “Gender to skin color, the complexion of your pigment / The same fight that led people to walk-outs and sit-ins,” is a problematic comparison that many LGBTQ activists make, but has particular repercussions for a widely acclaimed hip hop song.

36 Joel Connelly, “Same-Sex Marriage Leads in Washington, Passes in Maryland, Maine,” Seattle Post-Intelligencer, November 6, 2012, http://blog.seattlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2012/11/06/same-sex- marriage-leads-in-washington-maryland-and-maine/.

37 The Seattle-based lesbian singer–songwriter released her own song, “She Keeps Me Warm,” which expands on that hook, to much critical acclaim in 2014.

38 For example, in her book on lesbian history in twentieth-century America, Lillian Faderman writes of the early homosexual organizations of the 1950s, the Mattachine Society and the Daughters of Bilitis, “Their major effort became to educate both homosexuals and the public with regard to the ways in which the homosexual was just like any other good citizen.” Lillian Faderman, Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth-Century America (New York: Penguin Books, 1991), 190.

A Love Song for All of Us? 435

The music video for “Same Love” clearly illustrates the track’s mainstream mes- sage for LGBTQ equality. It opens with a birth scene, which recalls the liberal LGBTQ tenet that queer people are born that way. The video continues to follow the apparently mixed-race child as he moves through childhood where he is shown playing carefree with friends in the woods and near a stream, to adolescence where he participates in a round of spin the bottle, making pained faces that only the camera picks up, letting the viewer in on his discomfort at this heterosexual rite of passage while his peers around him remain oblivious. In a scene that takes place at a high school dance, the teenager is shown first dancing with his classmates to dance tunes, but when a slow dance begins he is the odd man out, standing alone as every- one around him forms into heterosexual pairs. Eventually, this unnamed protagon- ist meets another man who becomes the love of his life, and, after a period of dating and some push back from his family (which is presented in the form of an awkward dinner scene in which the parents get up from the dinner table and walk away, leav- ing the protagonist and his partner alone), they get engaged and are married. Macklemore appears as a guest at their wedding, which is presented as the climactic pinnacle of this story, with even the aforementioned homophobic parents in attend- ance, smiling with tear-filled eyes as their son is wed. The video ends with the interracial couple as old men, holding each other’s hands

as the protagonist lies dying in a hospital bed, presumably the same hospital in which he was born. While these images show that the couple has remained together for many years, seemingly demonstrating again that same-sex couples are just like heterosexual couples and that marriage equality leads to long, healthy relationships (rather than healthy relationships leading to successful marriages), they also illus- trate another argument in favor of marriage equality that centers on legal protec- tions for couples when one is hospitalized or dies.39 Historically, without the ability to be legally married, LGBTQ couples have experienced many hardships that would be alleviated by the benefits afforded to their heterosexual counterparts. Same-sex partners who are not legally married are often not considered family or next-of-kin and can thus be barred from visiting ill partners in hospitals or pre- vented from making arrangements after a partner’s death. Marriage equality extends those legal protections afforded to spouses to same-sex couples, including the right of spouses to serve as power of attorney in situations in which one partner is unable to make informed decisions. The story offered in the “Same Love” video is familiar from narratives told as part

of a mainstream and primarily gay, white, male-dominated movement for LGBTQ equality. These narratives are exemplified by the messages that make up the “It Gets Better Project” in that they illustrate the struggles of LGBTQ youth but suggest that if one can make it to adulthood most of their problems will dissipate because they

39 According to a study released in December 2014, same-sex couples dissolved their legal rela- tionships (i.e., marriages or civil unions) at a rate of 1.6 percent annually, a rate slightly lower than the 2 percent rate for heterosexual couples. See M. V. Lee Badgett and Christy Mallory, Patterns of Relationship Recognition for Same-Sex Couples: Divorce and Terminations (Los Angeles: The Williams Institute of the University of California School of Law, 2014).

436 Kehrer

will be assimilated into and accepted by the larger adult culture.40 The “It Gets Better Project” was founded in 2010 by columnist and gay activist Dan Savage in an attempt to “communicate to lesbian, gay, bisexual and transgender youth around the world that it gets better, and to create and inspire the changes needed to make it better for them.”41 The project consists primarily of videos made by people, includ- ing celebrities and influential individuals such as President Barack Obama, expres- sing their support for LGBTQ youth and assuring them that whatever their current struggles, their lives will improve as they grow older. The idea is that these videos will inspire LGBTQ youth who may be coping with bullying, intolerant families, depression, and other LGBTQ-related issues to be resilient and positive. A section of the “It Gets Better Project” website, entitled “Timeline: How It’s Gotten Better,” lists primarily legal accomplishments for LGBTQ populations in the United States and in other countries, such as progress for legal recognition for same-sex marriages and the passing of trans-inclusive legislation at local and national levels. From its beginning, however, the project has been criticized for what many view

as its lack of racial and gender analysis that has allowed it to capitalize on the deaths of white, male LGBTQ youth and focus on ways life gets better for that relatively privileged group. In a critique of the campaign, Kirk Grisham, a researcher at Columbia University writes:

Indeed, when we think of victims of homophobia-induced violence, many US citizens can easily recall the names of white gay males Tyler Clementi and Matthew Shepard but not Sakia Gunn, a black working class lesbian or Brandon White, a black gay youth. Why is that? Because many of the news stories prioritized within gay media outlets are framed by folk who seem to have a limited platform that favors particular persons, namely, middle- class white gay males, over some others. Savage and other middle-upper class gay white men benefit from this form of commodification.42

Grisham goes on to cite several of Savage’s implicitly racist comments throughout his career, including his supportive response to the US military involvement in Iraq in the early part of the twenty-first century, in which he engages in Islamophobia under the guise of eliminating anti-gay violence.43 As Grisham concludes, Savage often uses the rhetoric of LGBTQ equality to justify the continued marginalization and oppression of people of color. Although Macklemore’s “Same Love” does not at first blush appear to engage in

these same racial politics, especially given the racial identity of one of the video’s

40 It bears mentioning that this adult culture is predicated on heterosexual notions of domesticity and relationships. The “It Gets Better Project,” like the homophile movements of the mid-twentieth century, is therefore largely invested in the sameness approach, in which LGBTQ people are positioned as the same as heterosexuals in all but one, small way.

41 “What Is the It Gets Better Project?” It Gets Better Project, http://www.itgetsbetter.org/pages/ about-it-gets-better-project/.

42 Kirk Grisham, “From One White Gay Male to Another: Calling out the Implicit Racism in Dan Savage’s ‘Liberal’ Politics & the ‘It Gets Better’ Campaign,” The Feminist Wire, February 28, 2012, http://thefeministwire.com/2012/02/from-one-white-gay-male-to-another-calling-out-the-impli- cit-racism-in-dan-savages-liberal-politics-the-it-gets-better-campaign/.

43 See Dan Savage, “Say ‘YES’ to War on Iraq,” The Stranger, October 17, 2002, http://www.thes- tranger.com/seattle/say-yes-to-war-on-iraq/Content?oid=12237. Savage has since backtracked, stating that he was wrong to support the US invasion of Iraq, but the original post remains accessible online.

A Love Song for All of Us? 437

protagonists, the circumstances surrounding the song’s success, particularly when considering Macklemore’s own position as a white, straight, cisgender male working within the genre of hip hop, raise similar concerns as the “It Gets Better Project” and of mainstream American LGBTQ movements in general, especially the current focus on marriage equality as a priority. Perhaps nowhere have these issues been more present than at Macklemore’s and Ryan Lewis’s appearance at the 2014 Grammy awards, where the duo not only took home four Grammy awards, includ- ing a contentious one in the Best Rap Album category, but also performed “Same Love” with Mary Lambert and guest artists Madonna, Trombone Shorty, and Queen Latifah, who officiated the legal marriage of thirty-three couples as part of the performance. The segment begins with the aforementioned introduction by Queen Latifah,

who appears in a simple, black evening gown. As she finishes her introduction, the lights on the stage darken and Latifah disappears, while neon lights in the shape of cathedral windows begin to take shape and Macklemore emerges in silhou- ette from an arched, neon gate. The scene created by the lights becomes more and more intricate as the song progresses, drawing designs and patterns reminiscent of the stained glass windows found in Christian places of worship. Thus, the Grammy stage becomes another institution in which the battle for marriage equality fre- quently plays out: the church. Mary Lambert comes into view not through the gate from which Macklemore emerged, but to the side of it, backed by the rich brass sounds of New Orleans’ Trombone Shorty and his band. The camera offers a few quick glimpses of Ryan Lewis, situated behind a drum set and computer setup. After the third verse, the music pauses except for a held chord from a synthesized

organ, the sound that brings audiences to the church they have just witnessed taking shape. Queen Latifah reemerges through the neon gates, taking on role of preacher as she begins to officiate the legal wedding ceremony from the Grammy stage. As she takes her place on the Grammy stage-cum-pulpit, she conducts the actual ceremony:

We are gathered here to celebrate love and harmony in every key and every color. As I look out on this audience I’m delighted to see the faces of thirty-three couples who’ve chosen this moment to celebrate their vows with us here in Los Angeles, and everyone watching around the world as witnesses. It is my distinct honor to now ask our participants to exchange rings to signal their commitment to one another and to a life shared together with the music of love. Will you please exchange rings? Do you each declare that you take each other as spouses? By the power vested in me by the state of California, I now declare you a married couple!

For audiences watching from their television sets, the camera toggles between shots of Latifah, the rows of brides and grooms, and birds-eye views of the entire audience. In quick succession, we see both queer and straight couples: one man in traditional Indian dress marrying another man in a Western suit; one white heterosexual couple next to them; and a Latina bride and her white soon-to-be husband next to them. After another quick shot of Latifah we see a lesbian couple, one femme- presenting with an arm full of tattoos clothed in a white dress and the other with a short haircut and a black suit. The scene points to the diversity of the participants, while also erasing their individual experiences under the auspices of their shared

438 Kehrer

celebration of a difference-erasing love. In honoring the newlyweds as “married couples” Latifah folds the experiences of non-heterosexual couples into the hetero- normative model. As Latifah completes the ceremony, Madonna enters from the neon gate per-

forming the chorus from her own “Open Your Heart” in a white tuxedo. The camera alternates between shots of her and views of the just-married couples. Many of these couples are shown crying, embracing, and sometimes dancing, but never kissing. Even as we see a few same-sex couples begin to lean towards each other, the camera quickly moves to a different scene, as if producers intentionally censor these displays of affection between people of the same gender. The music returns to that of “Same Love” as the newly wedded couples process through the audience along with Trombone Shorty, and Madonna joins Lambert for the end of the song. By the end of the performance, the stained glass windows of the neon cathedral that has been growing and increasing in detail are filled in with bright colors, the transform- ation of Grammy stage to church wedding now complete. As Lambert and Madonna finish the song, the camera shows celebrities such as Keith Urban and Beyoncé in the audience smiling and wiping tears from their eyes at the touching display. In addition to subsuming queer couples under the rubric of heterosexual mar-

riage, this live performance of “Same Love” also highlighted some of the tensions between mainstream white LGBTQ activism and communities of color. Perhaps in an effort to mitigate the Recording Academy’s difficult relationship with hip hop over years, producers of the show advertised that the mass wedding would fea- ture couples that were “gay, straight, old, young, of many races and many colors” prior to the broadcast.44 However, the Grammy performance amplified Macklemore’s critiques of hip hop, erasing the black music genre’s history of grass- roots activism and drawing on rhetoric often used by proponents for marriage equality that creates a false dichotomy between black communities and LGBTQ individuals. This false dichotomy, which demonizes “black homophobia” as a particularly

large hurdle for (white) LGBTQ Americans on the road to legalized same-sex mar- riage, was perhaps most evident in the backlash against black voters following the passing of California’s Proposition 8 (hereafter Prop 8), an amendment to the state constitution that banned same-sex marriage in that state. Early exit polls, later proven inaccurate, estimated that seventy-percent of black voters, most of whom voted for President Barack Obama, also voted in favor of Prop 8.45 In the

44 Sisario, “Grammys to Feature On-Air Weddings of 34 Couples.” The Grammy Awards did not offer any categories to honor accomplishments in rap music until 1989, more than a decade after the genre first emerged. Rap awards were not included in the televised ceremony until the following year, and many rap artists have boycotted the awards over the past few decades, including Jay Z, Public Enemy, and 1989 winners DJ Jazzy Jeff and The Fresh Prince; see “The Evolution of Hip-Hop at the Grammy Awards and What It Means for 2014,” musictimes.com, January 25, 2014, http://www. musictimes.com/articles/3700/20140125/evolution-hip-hop-grammy-awards-what-means-2014.htm.

45 In a study released by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force Policy Institute, Patrick J. Egan and Kenneth Sherrill found that only 58 percent of black voters voted “yes” on Prop 8. See Patrick J. Egan and Kenneth Sherrill, California’s Proposition 8: What Happened, and What Does the

A Love Song for All of Us? 439

days following the November 4, 2008 election, several of the biggest media outlets cited this statistic as fact, and struggled to account for a population of Californians who would elect a Democratic president while also approving such a conservative ballot measure. Political analyses that appeared in the following days in major publications included Karl Vick and Ashley Surdin’s “Most of California’s Black Voters Backed Gay Marriage Ban” in the Washington Post and Farhad Manjoo’s “Props to Obama: Did He Help Push California’s Gay-Marriage Ban Over the Top?” which appeared in Slate, each placing blame squarely on the large number of black voters who turned out to elect the nation’s first black presi- dent.46 Vick and Surdin wrote:

No ethnic group anywhere rejected the sanctioning of same-sex unions as emphatically as the state’s black voters, according to exit polls. Fifty-three percent of Latinos also backed Proposition 8, overcoming the bare majority of white Californians who voted to let the court ruling [in favor of same-sex marriage] stand.

The outcome that placed two pillars of the Democratic coalition—minorities and gays—at opposite ends of an emotional issue sparked street protests in Los Angeles and a candlelight vigil in San Francisco.

Neither the Washington Post piece nor the Slate article mentions the staggering amount of financial and political backing offered by the Mormon Church, whose members are overwhelmingly white and who contributed in one estimate at least 50 percent of the financial backing used to pass the ballot measure.47

As Vick and Surdin’s language suggests, many white marriage equality suppor- ters used the false exit poll results to justify scapegoating black communities for Prop 8’s passing. Dan Savage wrote a blog post following the election in which he decried “black homophobia” as the root cause of the setback to marriage equality:

African American voters in California voted overwhelmingly for Prop 8, writing anti-gay discrimination into California’s constitution and banning same-sex marriage in that state. . . . I’m thrilled that we’ve just elected our first African-American president. . . . But I can’t help but feeling hurt that the love and support aren’t mutual.

I do know this, though: I’m done pretending that the handful of racist gay white men out there—and they’re out there, and I think they’re scum—are a bigger problem for African Americans, gay and straight, than the huge numbers of homophobic African Americans are for gay Americans, whatever their color.48

Future Hold? (San Francisco: National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 2009), http://www.thetaskforce. org/static_html/downloads/issues/egan_sherrill_prop8_1_6_09.pdf.

46 Karl Vick and Ashley Surdin, “Most of California’s Black Voters Backed Gay Marriage Ban,” Washington Post, November 7, 2008, http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/ 11/06/AR2008110603880.html; Farhad Manjoo, “Props to Obama: Did He Help Push California’s Gay-Marriage Ban Over The Top?” Slate, November 5, 2008, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_- and_politics/politics/2008/11/props_to_obama.html.

47 Jesse McKinley and Kirk Johnson, “Mormons Tipped Scale in Ban on Gay Marriage,” New York Times, November 14, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/2008/11/15/us/politics/15marriage.html?page- wanted=all&_r=0. According to research done by the Pew Research Center, 86 percent of all Mormons are white, see “A Portrait of Mormons in the U.S.,” pewforum.org, July 24, 2009, http:// www.pewforum.org/2009/07/24/a-portrait-of-mormons-in-the-us/#3.

48 Dan Savage, “Black Homophobia,” The Stranger “Slog” (blog), November 5, 2008, http://slog. thestranger.com/2008/11/black_homophobia, (emphasis in original).

440 Kehrer

While Savage claims to be inclusive of LGBTQ people (or rather, simply gay people) who are nonwhite, his language suggests he is engaging in what is colloquially referred to as “oppression Olympics,” in which Savage, a member of an oppressed group (gay men), insists that the oppression that he experiences is worse than and, in many instances, caused by, another oppressed group, namely African Americans. He further insists on speaking for gay men of color (he only mentions gay men in his tirade, never women or people of other genders or sexualities) when he states that homophobia, not racism, is the greatest threat to their safety and happiness, rather than exploring ways in which homophobia and racism may interact in these men’s lives. Savage was far from the only commenter who jumped on the idea of black homo-

phobia as way of explaining California’s setback in marriage equality. Andrew Sullivan, another well-known white gay blogger, also voiced his opinion that the black church was rampant with homophobia and posed a threat to LGBTQ equality. Following the 2008 election, he echoed and built on Savage’s comments:

For gay and lesbian black men and women, the blow [of black voters approving Prop 8] is even harder. But this community needs to be engaged not demonized, and we haven’t engaged enough. The black church is one of the most powerful forces fomenting homopho- bia in America, and [it] has fostered attitudes that have literally killed countless gay black men. It’s time to Act Up against those elements that p.c. liberals have been too timid to con- front. For the sake of African American gay and lesbian people as much as anyone else.49

Sullivan’s approach, which appears at first to recognize the impact of the passing of Prop 8 on black LGBTQ people, takes a decidedly paternalistic turn, when he sug- gests that “we” (presumably white gay folks like himself) act on behalf of black LGBTQ people against the powerful homophobia of the black church. As Slate contributor Jamelle Bouie points out, this scapegoating of black voters,

like Macklemore’s scapegoating of hip hop, is part of a larger phenomenon of “invented black pathology,” in which “behaviors present among other groups of Americans become pathologies when they’re exhibited by blacks.”50 Citing the report released by the National Gay and Lesbian Task Force in January 2009 that found that only 58 percent of African American voters supported Prop 8, he writes:

Prop 8 didn’t win because of blacks or Latinos, it won because millions of Californians— white as much as black or brown—opposed same-sex marriage. Older Californians were most opposed (67 percent), but a near-majority of 30-to-44-year-olds and 45-to-64-year-olds also supported the amendment.

And yet, the narrative was set: If not for homophobic blacks, Prop 8 would have lost. As such, when North Carolina banned same-sex marriage in 2012, the blame fell again on black Americans, treating black support as a function of “blackness” and not religiosity or age.51

49 Andrew Sullivan, “The Grim Truth,” The Atlantic “Daily Dish” (blog), November 5, 2008, http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/11/the-grim-truth.html.

50 Jamelle Bouie, “Blacks Don’t Have a Corporal Punishment Problem,” Slate, September 19, 2014, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/2014/09/blacks_and_corporal_punishment_why_ we_invent_black_pathologies.single.html.

51 Bouie, “Blacks Don’t Have a Corporal Punishment Problem.”

A Love Song for All of Us? 441

Thisnarrative,as Bouieillustrates, positions homophobiaasa uniquely blackproblem, rather than an American problem that cuts across all ethnic and racial communities. By painting homophobia as such, white LGBTQ leaders position themselves as wiser, more progressive, and thus better situated as leaders of a mainstream movement that can “fix” the problems within communities of color. It also further marginalizes queer peopleofcolor whoare left primarilyoutside of this discussion, unlesstheyare invoked as infantile subjects in need of saving from their own communities. Additionally, as Daniel Martinez HoSang chronicles, California has a history of

proposing and passing ballot initiatives that contradicts the seemingly progressive and liberal attitude of its electorate, especially in the realm of race and racism.52

He writes:

In the postwar era, rights and opportunity have been the lingua franca of California politics—the state has imagined itself at the forefront of not only national but global progress and development, fettered only by the limits to its own imagination. During this period, we can also locate many of the forces and dynamics posited to be the engines of “racial pro- gress”: a generally liberal culture, a relatively robust economy, an increasingly diverse popu- lace, and well-organized civil rights leadership. Yet . . . nearly every major civil rights and racial justice issue put before a vote of the people in California during this period has failed.53

HoSang examines ballot measures that he argues represented and helped shape ideas about race in postwar California, but a similar argument could be made about propositions related to other aspects of social justice, such as LGBTQ rights and equality. The [white] liberal imagination that HoSang discusses also remains a largely heterosexual one, and it is partly through ballot initiatives such as Prop 8 and the discourses that surround them that homonormative notions of LGBTQ indivi- duals and communities are produced and reproduced. In the discourses surround- ing Prop 8, the LGBTQ community was represented as a largely white community and homophobia among black voters, rather than among California voters of all races that have a history of voting against civil rights initiatives, were positioned as oppositional to LGBTQ equality. Macklemore’s assertion in “Same Love” that, “If I were gay, I would think hip hop

hates me” functions in much the same way as the backlash against black voters fol- lowing the passing of Prop 8 in that it also relies on the exaggerated concept of black homophobia as a threat to LGBTQ people. Rather than emphasize the black church as the source of the communities’ bigotry, he targets the cultural institution of hip hop, but the accusation still relies on an invented black pathology that locates homo- phobia in hip hop but not in other, predominantly white genres. While it is true that some mainstream hip hop features anti-gay slurs and attitudes, Macklemore’s pos- ition as a white rapper and the lack of any openly queer, black performers on his track complicates his criticism of the genre. Rather than combating homophobia in hip hop, his claims actually serve to bolster his strategic performance as a self- conscious, socially aware white rapper, while engaging in rhetoric that perpetuates a false dichotomy of black vs. gay.

52 Daniel Martinez HoSang, Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California (Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010).

53 HoSang, Racial Propositions, 2–4.

442 Kehrer

Public Self-Fashioning

Macklemore and Ryan Lewis won four of the seven Grammys for which they were nominated in 2014, including those for Best New Artist, Best Rap Album, Best Rap Song, and Best Rap Performance, with the last three being major awards in the Rap category. Aware of his sweeping success in one of the few categories in which black artists often win, Macklemore sent a text message to fellow rapper Kendrick Lamar, whose 2012 release good kid, m.A.A.d. city was also nominated in the Best Rap Album category but lost to The Heist. In this text, Macklemore awkwardly attempts to demonstrate his cognizance of the privilege that won him this accolade. It reads:

You got robbed. I wanted you to win [Best Rap Album]. You should have. It’s weird and sucks that I robbed you. I was gonna say that during the [acceptance] speech. Then the music started playing during my speech and I froze. Anyway, you know what it is. Congrats on this year and your music. [I] Appreciate you as an artist and as a friend. Much love.54

Macklemore then posted a screen shot of the text to his Instagram account, making what most felt should have been a private admission to a colleague a very public per- formance of his self-awareness.55 By posting this text online, Macklemore shared not just what might very well have been genuine admiration for a black artist in his genre, but also his own understanding of his white privilege. The Instagram photo was thus more a display of his own consciousness of his race than an apology to the individual he claimed to have “robbed,” and this public display further high- lighted his strategic positioning of his own racial difference. Macklemore later expressed regret for posting the text in an interview on HOT

97’s Ebro in the Morning, a hip hop radio talk show with a wide following.56 He stated:

We’ve [Lamar and Macklemore] texted [since the incident]. I made a mistake and a lot of fear was going into that moment. I wanted to win some Grammys. . . . I think we [Macklemore and Ryan Lewis] made a great album. I think it had great impact. . . . I wanted to win song of the year. I wanted to win best new artist. I wanted to win some rap categories. But I thought Kendrick had a better album. . . . The mistake came from Instagramming the text message and betraying my homie’s trust. That’s wack. . . . The language that I used was a bad call. “Robbed” was a bad choice of word. White people have been robbing black people for a long time. Of culture. Of music. Of freedom. Of their lives. That was a mistake.

Looking back at it, I learned about the voting process of the Grammys. Random people that aren’t necessarily part of the culture whatsoever joining in on the ballot that comes back down to this whole issue of privilege because they’re familiar with whoever is the big- gest artist. That’s who they check the box [for]. And in 2013, we had the biggest record.57

54 Macklemore, text message to Kendrick Lamar, posted on Instagram, January 27, 2014, https:// instagram.com/p/jqXYYAwK_y/?taken-by=macklemore.

55 Jon Caramanica, “Finding a Place in the Hip-Hop Ecosystem,” New York Times, January 27, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/28/arts/music/finding-a-place-in-the-hip-hop-ecosystem. html?_r=1.

56 Pap, “Macklemore Joins The Great Race Debate on Ebro in the Morning.” 57 Macklemore on HOT 97 talk show, December 29, 2014, cited in Jason Newman, “Macklemore

Talks Race, White Privilege and ‘Thrift Shop’ Backlash,” Rolling Stone, December 20, 2014, http:// www.rollingstone.com/music/videos/macklemore-race-white-privilege-thrift-shop-backlash-interview- 20141230.

A Love Song for All of Us? 443

Although Macklemore does state that he should not have shared the text as a public post (which was never removed from his Instagram account and remains available to anyone with internet access), he cites his use of language and his revelation of a private conversation as his mistake, not the highly visible display of race conscious- ness that it performed. The apology thus further serves Macklemore’s self- fashioning project in that it both highlights his racial self-consciousness, including his self-awareness of his own privilege, and positions him as an authentic subject thoughtfully engaged in the racial discourses of contemporary hip hop. In her book The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip

Hop—And Why It Matters, Tricia Rose examines these discourses surrounding the genre and explores the myths that shape them.58 She suggests that the widely touted argument that “hip hop hurts black people” is, while pervasive, ultimately based on unfair generalizations. She writes:

The bulk of the kind of hip hop that promotes the worst of what we find in the music and imagery [including homophobia] is commercially promoted, encouraged, produced, and distributed by major corporations. Images and ideas that reflect good will, love of commu- nity, and a diverse range of black experiences are relegated—no matter the quality of the rhymes or beats—to the underground or to the commercial margins of youth culture . . . the one-dimensional but highly visible claim that hip hop hurts black people refuses to shine a light on these less exploitative artists [such as The Roots, Common, Immortal Technique, and others] and aspects of the music—where critiques of society as well as humanizing and contextualized internal critiques of black community-destroying behaviors are the norm rather than the exception.59

Macklemore does not claim that hip hop, least of all his own brand of hip hop, hurts black people. He does, however, suggest that hip hop hurts gay people, an argument that is equally generalizing in its scope and detrimental to those hip hop practi- tioners who actively work against homophobia in their communities. It dismisses the work of openly queer black artists, such as Cakes da Killa, Mykki Blanco, Zebra Katz, Medusa, and the aforementioned Le1f, whose very existence, as well as their work, undermines such claims. Furthermore, the suggestion that hip hop hates gay people, like the idea that hip hop hurts black people, places the blame for homophobia squarely on the shoulders of the hip hop community, rather than situating it in a larger social and historical context of which hip hop is but a part. In both his music and his public life, Macklemore carefully navigates the hip hop

world by acknowledging his racial difference and privilege in a self-conscious way. Like Eminem, who rearticulated his whiteness to reflect the changing discourses around race and class in the late 1990s, Macklemore’s approach also mirrors his own historical and social context. In presenting himself as an activist–artist con- cerned with social justice issues, he connects his work to pressing issues such as police brutality against black citizens and marriage equality. At the same time, how- ever, he draws on rhetoric that both pathologizes black communities as

58 Tricia Rose, The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop—And Why It Matters (New York: Basic Civitas, 2008).

59 Rose, The Hip Hop Wars, 77–78.

444 Kehrer

disproportionately homophobic and continues to cast black people, and hip hop culture specifically, as oppositional to LGBTQ communities. He also continues to gain success in the larger music industry thanks in part to his whiteness, which draws the attention and appreciation of white fans that would not necessarily listen to black hip hop artists. As he himself stated, “Why am I safe? Why can I cuss on a record, have a parental advisory sticker on the cover of my album, yet parents are still like, ‘You’re the only rap I let my kids listen to.’ . . . it’s because of white privilege.”60

He even addresses these issues in more recent songs, such as “White Privilege II,” released in 2016 and featuring black woman singer and poet Jamila Woods. His rec- ognition of that fact and his willingness to engage in discussions of racial difference does not mitigate that reality, but it does open a space for him to perform a new kind of white authenticity in hip hop, one in which racial difference in the context of rap’s predominant black masculinity is addressed directly rather than obfuscated through the lens of class. Macklemore’s racial self-awareness manifests itself in the ways in which he expli-

citly connects his work to pressing social justice issues such as police brutalityagainst black people and marriage equality. At the same time, however, his track “Same Love,” which was widely heard through the Grammy award show broadcast and thus reached audiences beyond hip hop listeners, draws on rhetoric that relies on afalse dichotomy between black communities and LGBTQ communities, suggesting that neither overlaps with the other. The idea that hip hop in particular is especially homophobic renders queerand trans hip hop practitioners, manyof whom are black, invisible. The question, then, remains: is “Same Love” really a love song for all of us?

References

Books and Articles Armstrong, Edward G. “Eminem’s Construction of Authenticity.” Popular Music and Society 27, no. 2 (2004): 335–55.

Badgett, M. V. Lee, and Christy Mallory. Patterns of Relationship Recognition for Same-Sex Couples: Divorce and Terminations. Los Angeles: The Williams Institute of the University of California School of Law, 2014.

Bouie, Jamelle. “Blacks Don’t Have a Corporal Punishment Problem.” Slate, September 19, 2014, http://www.slate.com/articles/news_and_politics/politics/ 2014/09/blacks_and_corporal_punishment_why_we_invent_black_pathologies. single.html.

Burton, Justin Adams. Posthuman Rap. New York: Oxford University Press, 2017. Caramanica, Jon. “Finding a Place in the Hip-Hop Ecosystem.” New York Times, January 27, 2014, http://www.nytimes.com/2014/01/28/arts/music/finding-a- place-in-the-hip-hop-ecosystem.html?_r=1.

Christgau, Robert. “Customer Guide Review: Macklemore & Ryan Lewis.” Robert Christgau—Dean of American Rock Critics (website), http://www.robertchrist- gau.com/get_artist.php?name=macklemore.

60 Pap, “Macklemore Joins The Great Race Debate on Ebro in the Morning.”

A Love Song for All of Us? 445

Connelly, Joel. “Same-Sex Marriage Leads in Washington, Passes in Maryland, Maine.” Seattle Post-Intelligencer (blog), November 6, 2012. http://blog.seat- tlepi.com/seattlepolitics/2012/11/06/same-sex-marriage-leads-in-washington- maryland-and-maine/.

Egan, Patrick J., and Kenneth Sherrill. California’s Proposal 8: What Happened, and What Does the Future Hold? San Francisco: National Gay and Lesbian Task Force, 2009.

“The Evolution of Hip-Hop at the Grammy Awards and What It Means for 2014.” Music Times, January 25, 2014, http://www.musictimes.com/articles/3700/ 20140125/evolution-hip-hop-grammy-awards-what-means-2014.htm.

Faderman, Lillian. Odd Girls and Twilight Lovers: A History of Lesbian Life in Twentieth Century America. New York: Penguin Books, 1991.

Feeney, Nolan. “Macklemore’s ‘Thrift Shop’ Is First Indie Hit to Top Charts in Nearly Two Decades.” Time, January 25, 2013, http://newsfeed.time.com/2013/01/25/ macklemores-thrift-shop-is-first-indie-hit-to-top-charts-in-nearly-two-decades/.

Forman, Murray. The ‘Hood Comes First: Race, Space, and Place in Rap and Hip-Hop. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2002.

Gorzelany-Mostak, Dana. “Keepin’ It Real (Respectable) in 2008: Barack Obama’s Music Strategy and the Formation of Presidential Identity.” Journal of the Society for American Music 10, no. 2 (May 2016): 113–48.

Grisham, Kirk. “From One White Gay Male To Another: Calling out the Implicit Racism in Dan Savage’s ‘Liberal’ Politics & the ‘It Gets Better’ Campaign.” The Feminist Wire, February 28, 2012, http://thefeministwire.com/2012/02/from- one-white-gay-male-to-another-calling-out-the-implicit-racism-in-dan-savages- liberal-politics-the-it-gets-better-campaign/.

Headlee, Celeste. “Macklemore’s Brand of Socially Conscious Rap.” NPR, November 23, 2012, http://www.npr.org/2012/11/23/165667816/macklemores- brand-of-socially-conscious-rap.

Hess, Mickey. Is Hip Hop Dead?: The Past, Present, and Future of America’s Most Wanted Music. Westport, CT: Praeger Publishers, 2007.

HoSang, Daniel Martinez. Racial Propositions: Ballot Initiatives and the Making of Postwar California. Berkeley: University of California Press, 2010.

Jones, Jennifer. “Natalie Grant Responds After Leaving Grammys Early; Mass Wedding at Award Show Criticized as ‘Political Stunt’ to Push Gay Marriage Agenda,” Christian Today, January 29, 2014, http://www.christiantoday.com/art- icle/mass.wedding.at.2014.grammys.criticized.as.political.stunt.to.push.gay.mar- riage.agenda.natalie.grant.responds.after.early.exit/35586.htm.

Kajikawa, Loren. “Eminem’s ‘My Name Is’: Signifying Whiteness, Rearticulating Race.” Journal of the Society for American Music 3, no. 3 (August 2009): 341–63.

Kajikawa, Loren. Sounding Race in Rap Songs. Oakland: University of California Press, 2015.

Kehrer, Lauron. “Beyond Beyoncé: Intersections of Race, Gender, and Sexuality in Contemporary American Hip-Hop ca. 2010–2016.” PhD diss., University of Rochester, 2017.

Kitwana, Bakari. Why White Kids Love Hip-Hop: Wankstas, Wiggers, Wannabes, and the New Reality of Race in America. New York: Basic Civitas Books, 2005.

446 Kehrer

Manjoo, Farhad. “Props to Obama: Did He Help Push California’s Gay-Marriage Ban Over The Top?” Slate, November 5, 2008. http://www.slate.com/articles/ news_and_politics/politics/2008/11/props_to_obama.html.

McKinley, James C., Jr. “Stars Align for a Gay Marriage Anthem.” New York Times, June 30, 2013, http://www.nytimes.com/2013/07/01/arts/music/stars-align-for- a-gay-marriage-anthem.html?_r=0.

McKinley, Jesse, and Kirk Johnson. “Mormons Tipped Scale in Ban on Gay Marriage.” New York Times, November 14, 2008, http://www.nytimes.com/ 2008/11/15/us/politics/15marriage.html?pagewanted=all&_r=0.

Mincher, Chris. “Macklemore & Lewis’ ‘Same Love’ is More Than a Pro-Gay Marriage Anthem.” The A.V. Club, January 24, 2014s, http://www.avclub.com/ article/macklemore-amp-lewis-same-love-is-more-than-a-pro--200929.

Miyakawa, Felicia M. Five Percenter Rap: God Hop’s Music, Message, and Black Muslim Mission. Bloomington: Indiana University Press, 2005.

Naramore, Leanne. “Hip-Hop’s Macklemorex Ryan Lewis Release Beautiful Video for ‘Same Love.’” Human Rights Campaign, October 3, 2012, http://www.hrc.org/blog/ entry/hip-hops-macklemore-x-ryan-lewis-release-beautiful-video-for-same-love.

Newman, Jason. “Macklemore Talks Race, White Privilege and ‘Thrift Shop’ Backlash.” Rolling Stone, December 20, 2014, http://www.rollingstone.com/ music/videos/macklemore-race-white-privilege-thrift-shop-backlash-interview- 20141230.

Nichols, James. “Le1f, Gay Rapper, Blasts Macklemore for ‘Same Love’ Success.” Huffington Post, August 26, 2013, http://www.huffingtonpost.com/2013/08/29/ le1f-gay-rapper-blasts-macklemore_n_3836703.html.

Pew Research Forum. “A Portrait of Mormons in the U.S.” Pew Research Center, July 24, 2009, http://www.pewforum.org/2009/07/24/a-portrait-of-mormons-in-the- us/#3.

Rose, Tricia. The Hip Hop Wars: What We Talk About When We Talk About Hip Hop—And Why It Matters. New York: BasicCivitas, 2008.

Savage, Dan. “Black Homophobia.” The Stranger, “Slog” (blog), November 5, 2008, http://slog.thestranger.com/2008/11/black_homophobia.

Savage, Dan. “Say ‘YES’ to War on Iraq.” The Stranger, October 17, 2002, http:// www.thestranger.com/seattle/say-yes-to-war-on-iraq/Content?oid=12237.

Schloss, Joseph G. Foundation: B-Boys, B-Girls and Hip-Hop Culture in New York. Oxford: Oxford University Press, 2009.

Schloss, Joseph G. Making Beats: The Art of Sample-Based Hip-Hop. Middletown, CT: Wesleyan University Press, 2004.

Sewell, Amanda. “Paul’s Boutique and Fear of a Black Planet: Digital Sampling and Musical Style in Hip Hop.” Journal of the Society for American Music 8, no. 1 (2014): 28–48.

Shea, Carolyn. “Behind the Awesome.” The Evergreen Magazine, Spring 2013, http://www.evergreen.edu/magazine/2013spring/behind-the-awesome.htm.

Sisario, Ben. “Grammys to Feature On-Air Weddings of 34 Couples,” New York Times, “ArtsBeat” (blog), January 26, 2014, http://artsbeat.blogs.nytimes.com/ 2014/01/26/grammys-wedding-macklemore-ryan-lewis-queen-latifah/?_php= true&_type=blogs&_php=true&_type=blogs&hpw&rref=arts&_r=2.

A Love Song for All of Us? 447

Soderberg, Brandon. “Stop Saying Nice Things about Macklemore’s ‘Thrift Shop.’” Spin, January 24, 2013, http://www.spin.com/2013/01/stop-saying-nice-things- about-macklemores-thrift-shop/.

Sonenshein, Julia. “ATTENTION HOMOSEXUALS: It’s Finally Okay to Be Gay!” thegloss.com, January 27, 2014, http://www.thegloss.com/2014/01/27/culture/ macklemore-grammys-same-love-madonna/.

Sullivan, Andrew. “The Grim Truth.” The Atlantic, “Daily Dish” (blog), November 5, 2008, http://andrewsullivan.theatlantic.com/the_daily_dish/2008/11/the-grim- truth.html.

Trust, Gary. “Macklemore & Ryan Lewis Crown Hot 100, Justin Timberlake Soars to Top 5.” Billboard, January 23, 2013, http://www.billboard.com/articles/news/ 1521657/macklemore-ryan-lewis-crown-hot-100-justin-timberlake-soars-to- top-5.

Vick, Karl, and Ashley Surdin. “Most of California’s Black Voters Backed Gay Marriage Ban.” Washington Post, November 7, 2008, http://www.washington- post.com/wp-dyn/content/article/2008/11/06/AR2008110603880.html.

Weisbard, Eric. Top 40 Democracy: The Rival Mainstreams of American Music. Chicago: University of Chicago Press, 2014.

White, Miles. From Jim Crow to Jay-Z: Race, Rap and the Performance of Masculinity. Urbana: University of Illinois Press, 2011.

Media “Grammy Rehearsal Macklemore Ryan Lewis, Madonna, Mary Lambert Same Love, Open Your Heart1.” YouTube, June 25, 2015, https://www.youtube.com/watch? v=eCl-BE2_nts.

Pap, Young. “Macklemore Joins The Great Race Debate on Ebro in the Morning.” Video, Hot 97, December 29, 2014, http://www.hot97.com/news/new-hot97/ macklemore-joins-great-race-debate-ebro-morning-video.

“What Is the It Gets Better Project?” It Gets Better Project, http://www.itgetsbetter. org/pages/about-it-gets-better-project/.

448 Kehrer

Copyright © The Society for American Music 2018