This Unruly Mess I’ve Made: Macklemore & Ryan Lewis album review

Grammy Award winning Hip-Hop artist Macklemore, and Ryan Lewis released their second album, “The unruly Mess I’ve made” on February 26, 2016. This album is being noticed as the most anticipated album release from the duo since the release of their first album “The Heist” in 2012. Ben Haggerty also known as Macklemore is a Seattle, Washington native, who has always taken his music and more specifically hip-hop music seriously. Haggerty feels as if music was the key to his life’s problems, a theory he found true during the release of his very first solo work. In the year 2008 he had succumbed to a bad drug addiction and sought his way through it all, with the release of his music. Ben met his partner and producer Ryan Lewis just before his entrance into rehab when Lewis was just a teenager. In 2010 released “The vs. Redux” an EP that was produced and sold independently. Although they were criticized, and ridiculed because of their ethnicity they did not stop the process of creating music. They continued to release albums independently before their hard work, dedication, and online buzz placed them exactly where they dreamed to be. They were able to release the Grammy Award winning album “The Heist” in 2012, which features 18 songs and the hit songs, “Thrift Shop” and “Can’t Hold Us”. Their mission was to create a non-traditional style of hip-hop that would change the way people thought of how hip-hop was defined. Another goal of the duo was to create a sound and lyrics that would appeal to the ideas that were rarely ever discussed in the hip-hop culture. The duo’s song “Same Sex” provided controversy across hip-hop because it boldly discussed the ideas of same sex marriage, an idea at the time that seemed so feeble, but is now a nationwide law. The new album “This Unruly Mess I’ve Made”, has 13 songs, and is completely produced by Ryan Lewis. It features artist such as, Chance the Rapper, Ed Sheeran, Grandmaster Caz, Eric Nally, and even actor Idris Elba. The album has new songs but the artist motives has never changed. They are still here to provide the world with music that is different from any hip-hop or pop that we have heard before. This album includes the popular hit “Downtown”, featuring Eric Nally, which seemed to blaze the radio stations across the world, with its distinctive “downtown” chorus. It peaked at number 5 on the album charts. Most of the album’s controversy comes from the song on the album entitled “White Privilege II,” a continuation from a song on his first EP, “White Privilege”. The song discusses white privilege and the social movement associated with Black Lives Matter. Most of the song according to the duo is “An ongoing dialogue with musicians, activists, and teachers within our community in Seattle and beyond.” The album is available on ITunes, Spotify and other online music streaming websites.