In Defense of Macklemore

(Who Isn’t Madonna)

On August 25 at the MTV Video Music Awards, rapper Macklemore performed his hit song “Same Love,” which touches on prejudices against gay people in America. The performance and Macklemore’s success at the show, including a win for Best Video with A Social Message and two other awards, sparked a social-media uproar — leaving many members of the LGBTQ community upset that the current poster child for gay rights is a “straight, white man” who’s making money off of his political statement.

Though I’m not the biggest fan of the song, which I think is calculated and totally cheesy, I didn’t understand the overwhelming negative response. Wouldn’t we be rejoicing if, say, straight white men were gallivanting around singing feel good rap-ballads about gay rights in Russia — where a law was recently passed making it illegal to “spread propaganda” informing minors that homosexuality even exists?

 Macklemore is able to reach a different demographic than queer artists do. This is part of the hostility, the argument being: Why can the general public only accept a political, gay song when it’s coming from a straight guy? To which I say, people who listen to political queer artists probably don’t need to be convinced of gay rights. And people who do need to be convinced probably aren’t listening to political queer artists. These people need a straight guy to warm the waters. That guy is Macklemore.

“I’m a gay who hates Macklemore,” said Mitchell Sunderland, a cultural journalist. “He acts like he’s progressive. He’s not. It’s commercially a good idea to like gays — we support most pop acts. Madonna singing about AIDS when AIDS was commercial suicide — was progressive.”

Though I agree that Same Love is “commercially a good idea,” Macklemore’s financial success doesn’t subtract from the song’s power  — and the song does have power. It is unmistakably and totally about the defense of the integrity of homosexuality — and it’s popular. Money doesn’t undo the song’s message and its popular acceptance.

One of the more popular Anti-Macklemore responses came from queer, African American rapper, Le1f, who posted a series of hostile tweets in response to the awards show. Some of the tweets were:

“news just in: gay people don’t care about your video about gay people”

AND

“I’m gonna write a song about disabled people, or about the aboriginal struggle. cuz mama needs a fur coat. oh wait, that’s evil.”

But the tweet that struck me most was:

“gay kids don’t come out cuz of Macklemore vids. they come out to Bjork concerts YA DIG??”

Mitchell’s point: Macklemore is not progressive, Madonna is progressive.

Le1f’s point: Macklemore is not progressive, Bjork is progressive.

Bjork is great, but Le1f is wrong. Not every gay kid is eclectic, not every scared middle-school queer in middle-America has been exposed to Bjork, or to vintage-Madonna’s comment on AIDS for that matter. To most of the world, Same Love is progressive. It’s huge. It’s gay rights dancing around on stage with Miley Cyrus, and I know gay kids are coming out to that.

The underlying issue I see here is that gay culture is beginning to be appropriated to the mainstream, and this is scary not only to many “straight white men,” but also, as it turns out, to many people in the LGBTQIA community. It is possibly the early stages of the death of something controversial and beautiful — something that was once observed for subculture but is now popular for MTV award shows. Maybe this is the price of progress. Do I have any desire to watch Macklemore perform Same Love on television? Heck no. Am I proud to live in a time and place where Same Love is popular, loved, and celebrated? Absolutely.