An Ideological Exploration Of Macklemore s Racial...

An Ideological Exploration of Macklemore’s Racial Redemption As a musical genre and cultural movement, Hip Hop and Rap have been both cultural phenomena and musical genres within the United States that have reached internationally and driven conversations on sociopolitical troubles such as war, violence, and racism. Hip Hop and rap which at times have been used interchangeably, have seen drastic changes in both their reception as musical genres and have garnered vast visibility within the United States. Hip Hop and Rap artists have been integral to driving conversations that are often ignored. As musical genres, Hip Hop and Rap create a space of situated knowledge and reveal the underlying dominant hegemonic ideologies within society. Whiteness as the modus operandi becomes a central place of questioning that music and specifically Hip Hop and Rap help put into question. Questioning of Whiteness through these genres of music help reveal the co-constitutive nature of music and ideology. My goals within this paper are not an attempt to explore musicality or the power of music; rather, I am interested in how ideology becomes constituted within lyrics and what they reveal about the intersections of identity, authenticity, Whiteness, and race. Within these intersections is where we are able to see meaning be negotiated, and through communication we are able to explore how different meanings get constituted as hegemonic. Nakayama and Krizek offer us a starting point for analysis