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The curtain comes down and Macklemore only feels like a wannabe. Thought I’d feel better when the award show was over Wanted to be Wayne with the accent from the ‘Nolia Wanted to throw up the Roc, wanted to be Hova I know now who I am when the lights go out and it falls down But toward the end of the song, he turns his criticism inward, realizing a contradiction in his desires: He’s “miserable here / But wanna make sure I’m invited next year.” And then: He forgot his belt at the hotel-“this sucks.” He realizes awards shows are more about ratings and marketing than art. As for Macklemore’s rapping, he does a solid job of putting you in the moment with him as he looks up tie-tying tutorials on YouTube, gawks at Taylor Swift from a few rows over, and gives his thank-you speech.īut what is the song’s drama really about? He says he did drugs a couple days earlier and sort of regrets it. By all measures, what he’s doing is corny, and that’s why it works: The goosebumps that the song is designed to provide are more typical of Coldplay-style rock than of most mainstream hip-hop. On a song like this, you can understand why he’s popular. The opener, “Light Tunnels,” uses the most bombastic tools in Ryan Lewis’s arsenal-galloping drums, orchestral swells, a guest vocalist cackling about stormy weather and such-as Macklemore narrates his night at the Grammys. Perhaps in response to the backlash his rise caused, he’s released an album that suggests he is living through the great millennial nightmare: laying your soul bare, and finding only banality. But the way that song gleefully sacrifices Macklemore’s dignity without regard for the listener’s is typical. The 32-year-old Seattle rapper had the good sense to relegate “Spoons” to bonus-track status on his new album This Unruly Mess I’ve Made, his second collaboration with the producer Ryan Lewis and his first full-length since achieving superstardom in 2012. Recommended: Who Will Win at the 2016 Oscars? But is there anything interesting about Macklemore’s embarrassment here? How much is gained in the gross-out, really? Vulnerability in art is usually a good thing, and so is honesty. If you make it to the second verse, you’ll hear Macklemore lay into his girlfriend for having watched some Game of Thrones episodes without him, and then giving up the fight as soon as she starts giving him a handjob, which causes him to come immediately. But there’s another factor in understanding why a song like this makes some people want to die when they listen.