Establishment hip-hop

While listening to Macklemore's somewhat well-meaning, certainly self-serving and dubiously discourse-shifting embarrassment of a single the other day, it occurred to me that he'd be exactly the kind of figure that a politician or political institution could safely employ in the service of getting some hamfisted point across. He's white, he makes a big show of progressiveness, he's popular and he's a complete drip. It may well be that he is already something of an Establishment figure, even if there's no official connection yet.

This got me thinking - what other hip-hop artists have preached a kind of cultural 'steady on now', co-opting the music of the underprivileged black struggle into a clumsy public information broadcast? I guess there's the likes of Plan B - perhaps Macklemore's UK equivalent - but I'm sure this phenomenon must pervade further. What are these people trying to achieve? What are they achieving?

never heard macklemore
what is the music of macklemore like irl?

let's run the numbers shall we

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=QK8mJJJvaes
https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=s8GvLKTsTuI

If he was as well meaning as he makes out he would have taken the Cardiff job

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=t2qDkKpD8Co

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Saturday, January 30, 2016 6:53 AM I Love Music Multiple messages: [5787626] deleted from thread: why are most white rappers ugly?

I don't think Plan B is very popular here ... kinda want to hear/know more about this Macklemore equivalent

happy to help u there

tho first

need to know abt this macklemore person that u have in america

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=sSEN0jfG544

He's white, he makes a big show of progressiveness, he's popular and he's a complete drip.

love that bully rap

Album of the year. She's an amazing storyteller, and she really inhabits the voices of all three characters so convincingly, so they're living, breathing people, not archetypes. It's a really gripping listen, en masse, and you don't know how it'll play out until the final moments. But despite being a story, it has immense replay value, and the album is littered with moments that literally knock me cold, like the interaction between the drug-dealer kid and his step-dad, or the other guy's restless and unquenchable jealousy over his masseuse girlfriend, and the way she describes the first guys as "one of those 'save me' types" when she first meets him.

I think it's a genuine masterpiece, truly remarkable. This has been an amazing year for music, but this is so easily my favourite album of the year, without question.

Let me guess... Kate Tempest?

what do you think of plan b, dl?

Of all the wielders of words, Kate Tempest is my favourite.

i don't have strong feelings about plan b. was kind of semi-into a kate tempest album a couple of years ago but found i couldn't really go back to it.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=yGEXLWNccBM

hehe these wiki-references kinda funny

"Kate Tempest wins Ted Hughes poetry prize for 'spoken story'", Guardian, 27 March 2013
"A life of rhyme: Kate Tempest's poetry-music fusion". The Independent. 1 March 2010. Retrieved 16 September 2012.
"Urban poets bring the spirit of William Blake back to the streets". Evening Standard. 12 June 2009. Retrieved 16 September 2012.
"William Shakespeare: A digital reinvention". The Economist. 28 August 2012. Retrieved 15 September 2012.
"Kate Tempest: the performance poet who can't be ignored" 10 April 2013, Guardian.

It will be interesting to see how she develops and whether, as she becomes more successful and affluent, she can retain the authenticity of experience of south London life that marks out her work and makes her such an astonishing live performer.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=VFEBBSKwaIQ

Tempest has proved you can have intergenerational appeal and still be cool, and that you can stretch your creative wings and not settle in one place.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=RuODRMitSCQ

Tempest was in Australia earlier this month socking it to them at the Sydney writers’ festival with a speech in which she insisted that guilt about racism is just another form of narcissism and that what is urgently required is “empathy, humility, reparation and change”.

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=HGAMJQzvj9Y

gripping thread, en masse