Name: William Durham
Student Number: 10045343
Professor: Chris Bongie
Course Code: ENG 293-001
Producing the Authentic: Oppositional Semiotics and Macklemore
Introduction
Macklemore and his producer Ryan Lewis have enjoyed widespread success. Their success has been both critical – 2012 album The Heist has received “generally favorable reviews” from both fans and critics (Metacritic, 2014) – and commercial – their hit single with singer Wanz, “Thrift Shop”, has been proclaimed the most popular rap song since the inception of the Hot 100 Rap Songs chart (Billboard Staff & Ramirez, 2014, March 6). Additionally, in January 2014 the duo won in the categories Best Rap Song, Best Rap Album, Best Rap Performance, and Best New Artist at the 56th Grammy …show more content…
His involvement in this genre necessarily requires the listener to judge his music against his or her own understanding of the workings of the genre. As Danesi (2012) writes, genres have certain conventions by which audiences recognize them, and particular genres attract particular audiences (p. 32-33). A rap artist, then, necessarily follows certain conventions that allow the artist and the listeners to call the music “rap”. At the same time, a rap artist’s interaction with the established conventions of the genre will determine how he, or she, is perceived by audiences. Macklemore, then, is acknowledged to make music in a historically black genre whose conventions, for many audience members, mandate superficiality and various forms of violence. An interpretation of Macklemore must begin with fixing this artist’s relationship to the genre in which he works, in an attempt to understand his own position in hip-hop and how the audience fixes him in relation to their understanding of rap …show more content…
In taking Macklemore seriously, they take themselves seriously, and understand themselves as “serious” rap-listeners. In the moment that such a listener listens to rapper, he or she experiences a kind of reassurance through safety and the apparent familiarity of experience; he or she then identifies and relates to the music and the lyrics contained, because they reflect their own beliefs, or desired beliefs, about themselves and about the world. Macklemore, thus, provides an experience of authenticity, connection, and seriousness, which allows the listener to better define the boundaries and values of his or her own internal