Macklemore has responded to claims he is a culture vulture. The claims hit their peak after he won a Grammy over Kendrick Lamar.
At the 2014 Grammy Awards, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis took home the Best Rap Album award for The Heist over Kendrick’s good kid m.A.A.d. city. The fans were outraged.
Macklemore says he not a vulture.
“I think that it did hurt my feelings at the very beginning,” he told HHDX. “When ‘Thrift Shop’ was at its peak and the biggest song in the world, that’s when the think pieces started coming out around cultural appropriation, and one hit wonder, and all of this assessment and analysis.”
He continued, “We were at a different place with whiteness in Hip Hop a decade ago,” he explained. “It was a very different time. One thing that the criticism did, [it made me] dig deep into myself, and [I had] the realization that I don’t control who resonates with my art.”
[social_warfare]