Hip-hop’s new pro-gay anthem can be misguided and self-elevating, but it’s also talking acceptance with straight teenaged boys on their own terms.
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The first time I heard Macklemore’s “Same Love,” a pop-rap indictment of hip-hop culture’s heteronormativity, I hated it.
Sanctimonious in delivery, front man Ben Haggerty’s declaration of allegiance to righting the wrongs of homophobia comes off as convenient and oblivious. Lifting themselves above an otherwise flawed musical community, Macklemore is oblivious of race — a white rapper using culturally-black means to lambast what remains a predominately black subculture. What’s more, “Same Love” does not stop there its self-elevation.
As with any self-appointed “Ally,” a position which allows straight men and women to elevate themselves through the co-option and commiseration of a suffering they cannot understand, “Same Love” forgets that homophobia is no different than bigotry. Differentiating the two makes it an issue of religion and morality, not civil rights, and “Same Love” does nothing to make this commonly muddied distinction more clear. After years of witnessing oppression by heteronormative popular culture, Macklemore apparently just couldn’t take it anymore, releasing the biggest “I Love You…but not like that” statement of last year.
But for all of its flaws, “Same Love” warrants attention, and yes, commendation too. While it is easy for me to criticize the song, I also cannot ignore the fact that it is so very unexpected. In the history of popular music, few songs have expressed support of the LGBT community’s youngest members in ways that come off as straight.
When I say that “Same Love” is “straight”, I mean that it stands in stark contrast to the gay-affirming pop that came before it. Too often, pro-queer pop is simply too queer for beleaguered teenaged listeners who want nothing more than to be straight. Songs like “Born This Way” gave gay teens everywhere the hope that they might someday find success in a drag or back-up dancing career, ignorant of the fact that many gay teens resent these suggestions that these are the only ways to be truly gay. Had “Born This Way” debuted when I was 15, I doubtless would have spent more time shoved against a locker and less time expressing my gay empowerment. I just did not want to be gay, and “Born This Way” wouldn’t have changed my mind.
Yes, Haggerty is not calling for loud and proud self-acceptance exactly, but he is criticizing the culture which makes being out so difficult. And despite the fact that he self-identifies as a gay “Ally,” he does so in a novel way. “Same Love” may be the first pop song that invites straight teenaged boys to adopt the ideology of an Ally by using their favorite medium, rap, to express its point on their level.
Ultimately, “Same Love” isn’t for now out gay-twenty somethings, and recognizing this made me consider it more favorably. Macklemore’s audience does not have the liberal arts schooling he and I do to understand the nuances of race as a white person, the problems that his reappropriation may suggest. They certainly don’t know what heternormativity is. What they do have, however, is the ear for Macklemore’s product.
I don’t think I’ll ever care much for “Same Love,” but that doesn’t matter. What does matter, and what is so exciting about “Same Love,” is that people like my little brother and his friends are listening to it. I could have used a song like this when I was 15, and for that reason alone, I’m glad it’s out there.
Photo: AP/Carlo Allegri
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