Macklemore & Ryan Lewis are ramping up their activity as they prepare for the February 26 release of This Unruly Mess I’ve Made. Today, that meant dropping “White Privilege II,” a spiritual sequel to the track Macklemore released on his solo project Language of My World in 2009.
Macklemore touches on a number of topics on the 8-minute track, but always circles everything back to the subject at hand - white privilege. In one stanza he uses Australian rapper Iggy Azalea (along with Miley Cyrus and Elvis) as the paradigm for white privilege, rapping, “You’ve exploited and stolen the music, the moment, the magic, the passion the fashion, you toy with / The culture was never, yours to make better / You’re Miley, you’re Elvis, you’re Iggy Azalea.”
Now Iggy Azalea has responded to the record via Twitter, saying “he shouldn’t have spent the last 3 yrs having friendly convos and taking pictures together at events if those were his feelings.” She added that she doesn’t care about the “diss,” and that “people are going to like whoever they want so, let them.”
These are surprisingly balanced words from the normally combative emcee. What’s not surprising? Two white people pretending to like each other for years and then feeling hurt when one isn’t genuine.
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