REVIEW: Macklemore’s ‘Ben’ is a concept album where he imagines his own death. Miraculously, it’s not as cringey as you might expect.
been kind of a lot. The histrionic hooks, middlebrow exegeses about white privilege, the double- and triple-time bars, even: He is the only popular rapper with the panting, sweaty air of a Broadway showman, almost pathologically eager to please. History will never forget him as the guy who won a Grammy and then apologized to the guy who should’ve won that Grammy, and then
on Instagram. Given how over-the-top the general Macklemore experience has been, the notion that the rapper’s new comeback LP,is a front-to-back concept album about his own death might strike the Macklemore-averse as way, way too much Macklemore. Surprisingly, it finds him mellowed out, focused, with a newfound interest in subtlety and even subtext. Following the deceptively IMAX-scale “Chant,” which sounds more of a piece with his bombastic work with the producer Ryan Lewis, the record settles into a stretch of spunky pop rock, including a shimmering, M83-esque bit of rap-free synth-pop on “1984.
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