https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=bdh8qwt7uPA
Hot 97 tackles race in Hip-Hop again, this time, with Macklemore
If Azealia Banks‘ tassles with T.I., Iggy Azalea, Action Bronson, Twitter and more are the mushroom cloud of the bomb that was Iggy Azalea’s Grammy nominations, Macklemore was the detonator. After he swept the rap Grammys last year and defeated the people’s champ Kendrick Lamar–who was en route to an 0-for-7 night–for Best Rap Album, the race in Hip-Hop conversation that was always casually mentioned whenever Eminem was up for a Grammy, or Mac Miller debuted high on the charts, became the focal point of the culture. As the Grammy Awards draw nearer, that is something not likely to change.
Enter Macklemore, wannabe rap star turned actual, multi-platinum rap star, winner of 4 Grammy Awards and quite possibly, prior to the release of Iggy Azalea’s “Fancy,” the most controversial Hip-Hop artist in America. Earlier this year, after he emerged from the awards triumphant, posted a text message he sent to Kendrick Lamar apologizing for “robbing” the TDE rapper, drawing ire from Drake, who was nominated for some of the same awards Kendrick and Macklemore were nominated for, and other rappers around the industry. Yesterday, he sat down as a “co-host” of Ebro in the Morning on Hot 97, and talked about everything, from the benefits of being a rapper that can use white privilege to his advantage, to his mishandling of the entire Kendrick Lamar situation.
