The VS. EP is available by free download. Click below for the link.

Macklemore makes music that’s nice to the ears and soul. He is at once confident, humorous, nostalgic, self-deprecating, and completely unapologetic for who he is. For these reasons, he’s one of Seattle hip-hop’s biggest nerds and one of its coolest cats. He’s the rapper other wannabe rapper nerds strive to be like. That is, if said nerds all had the gift of hip-hop gab like him which, alas, they don’t. They’ll just have to go on envying.

On his 2005 debut, The Language of My World, Macklemore showed he could bridge the gap between a white middle-class upbringing and hip-hop, without disrespecting the music’s origins. He found some quick success when he was “discovered” by Myspace co-founder Tom Anderson, and was a featured music artist on the seminal social networking site. It’s easy to accept Macklemore, a white man in a traditionally black and latino man’s game, because of the commitment he shows to the art form. Fair or unfair, white rappers typically have to work harder to be taken seriously, especially in mainstream hip-hop. The fact that Macklemore was willing to recognize and explore the implications of his race in a song like “White Privilege” showed a unique engagement and unspoken pledge to honor hip-hop’s racial history. It doesn’t hurt that Mack has found success as a performer in lily-white Seattle, a city that is eager to embrace hip-hop’s defiant tendencies especially if they’re delivered by someone who appears “safe”. This isn’t meant to criticize Macklemore (that would be faulty and completely unfair), it’s just an unfortunate condition of the racial atmosphere in Seattle. We are not as progressive as we would like to believe. But this is primarily an album review, not social commentary, so let’s get back on track…

The VS. EP marks Macklemore’s second proper album release. (He dropped The Unplanned Mixtape a few months ago as a primer to this.) The Language of My World was solid, sensible, underground hip-hop, and The Unplanned Mixtape continued in that vein, save for a few wacky excursions into comedic territory. VS, however, is a concept album of sorts, at least when it comes to its sonic arrangements. All production is handled by the talented jack-of-all-multimedia-trades, Ryan Lewis. Together, the duo made a conscious decision to dabble in dreaded rap-rock hybrid territory, a particular sub-genre littered with the carcasses of haphazard mash-ups and dubious commercial experiments. I’m happy to report, however, that while others have tried in vain to bridge the rap-rock gap, Mack and RL have created seven tracks of successful coalescence. VS doesn’t sound like something released in haste. It seems to have been well plotted from the start.

Lewis takes samples from well-known rock groups and combines them with hip-hop and electro dance beats, bass lines, and ornamentation. What Lewis attempts has been done before, but rarely with such good results. The lifted samples are blatant, but RL never lets the source material transcend the soul of the album which remains rooted in hip-hop. This isn’t a mash-up, it’s rap music comfortably co-existing with rock flourishes. For example, “Otherside” features an obvious lift from the Red Hot Chili Peppers song of the same name, an instantly recognizable guitar lick that, in the wrong producer’s hands, could have doomed the song. Lewis lets the melody complement the beat, however, and things stay cool. Likewise for “Life is Cinema”, where the defining vocal refrain (“I’ve got soul/But I’m not a soldier”) from The Killers’ Hot Fuss is used as a triumphant rallying cry for overcoming one’s deadly vices (in this case, Macklemore’s former substance abuse problems). And “Vipassana” employes The Moments’ “Love on a Two-Way Street” to a decidedly greater understated emotional effect than compared to the sample’s use in “Empire State of Mind”. Fittingly, the EP’s best tracks represent opposite ends of the experimental spectrum: “Crew Cuts” is a nostalgia-laced Seattle hard-rock posse cut, something that would sound at home on Damon Dash’s BlakRoc. And “Kings” (featuring Champagne Champagne) is an arena-sized Gladiatorial headbanger, with Thomas Gray emerging the victorious emcee.

All of the music works because of Mack and RL’s total commitment to the idea, which is really the greatest thing about Macklemore the rapper. He unabashedly embraces his creative instincts to the point where whatever he tries is sure to succeed. A song like “Irish Celebration” (a tribute to the rapper’s heritage) had the potential to be fairly corny and uninteresting to non-Irish folks, but with Mack’s passion and commitment behind it, it turns endearing. Macklemore is a capable battle-rapper and evocative storyteller, but on VS he’s mostly focused on introspection and confession. He describes his trials with substance abuse and the struggle to get sober in a near whisper that sometimes feels so intimate it’s uncomfortable to listen to on headphones. The song “Otherside”, a cautionary tale about syrup, feels like music as therapy. Anyone who’s ever tried to express a deeply personal part of their lives in artwork knows that that elucidation isn’t easy. It’s important to recognize Macklemore’s rhymes on VS for what they are: a brave and necessary release of the man’s inner demons.

I suppose one could say that Macklemore could single-handedly underwrite emo-rap in Seattle. That’s an unfair assessment of the man’s place in the game, however. To err is to be human, and to create a hip-hop confession of one’s transgressions doesn’t make you the official poster boy for emo-rap. (I hate that term, by the way.) Rapping about what you know is what “keeping it real” is all about. Lots of pretenders exist in the hip-hop game. Macklemore is not one of them.