Since you asked, I want to tell you all about my Saturday night. While most other people were putting the finishing touches on their Halloween costumes, I was in my room building a fort with my roommate and some friends because I’m not about that life. After we built the fort, we turned all the lights out and sat inside it with a flashlight and asked each other thought-provoking questions that we wrote out on slips of paper and put in a pile. Forget scary movies and hiding behind doors, you guys. If you want to scare somebody, ask them point blank to describe to you in detail their life goals or their plans for after graduation. Spooky.
Also asking the big questions is Macklemore, a.k.a. singer-songwriter Ben Haggerty. A Seattle native, Macklemore began his musical career when he was in high school, and has been releasing music independently since 2000. Macklemore’s latest album, “The Heist,” was released earlier this month.
Macklemore writes thoughtful, challenging, socially-conscious lyrics infused with his own experiences that confront the listener, and ask them to question the way society presents life, compared to how it actually is. Much of Macklemore’s songs are directed at society’s youth, due to Haggerty’s previous experience of working at a juvenile detention facility where he contributed to a program based around rap.
His songs “Vipassana” and “Same Love” are fan favorites, but his song “Wings” best exemplifies Macklemore’s use of autobiographical information in his songs to reach out to the younger generation. The song talks about Haggerty’s childhood compulsion to buy the latest style of Nike shoes:
“They started out, with what I wear to school
That first day, like these are what make you cool
And this pair, this would be my parachute
So much more than just a pair of shoes
Nah, this is what I am
What I wore, this is the source of my youth
This dream that they sold to you
For a hundred dollars and some change
Consumption is in the veins
And now I see it’s just another pair of shoes.”
With violin, trumpet, drums, guitar, bass and piano, Haggerty and his band create a form of rap that isn’t repetitive, obscenity-laden noise, but incendiary, inspirational and inquisitive as to why society is what it is, and what we as human beings can do about it
