Number Ones: Navigating The Bizarrely Inconsistent Race Relations In Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ ‘Downtown’

In his semi-regular column, musicologist Tim Byron takes a deep dive into the new song at the top of the ARIA Singles Chart.

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These days, the songs that get to number one on the charts tend to be ruthlessly professional. You know the type: it’s probably written and produced by Max Martin (who as of this week has five separate songs in the Australian singles charts); there’s something vaguely funky in the rhythm section; the synths sound like a million dollars (“expensive sounds”, as Bieber calls them); there’s hooks every seven seconds, and a chorus bigger than Ben Hur. These songs are micromanaged to the millisecond.

In contrast, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ ‘Downtown’ comes across as weirdly amateurish. My first thought upon hearing the song fade out for the first time was, “Well, that’s just killed his career. Into the bin!”

Of course, you’re reading a column dedicated to number one singles, so Macklemore’s career has clearly survived. But this song is very far from a sleek machine. And it contains a whole swathe of contradictory messages, too.

Most obviously, the song suffers from the distinct sound of too many cooks; indeed, six songwriters are credited here. Though the recording sounds schmick enough, it feels like the song itself needed further edits – it just doesn’t have the clarity and precision of a good final draft. But the most obvious thing about the song that keeps it from sleekness is its structure: there’s an old-school hip-hop section, and there’s a Broadway section. They go together like dork and cheese.

Old-school hip-hop and Broadway musicals are philosophical opposites. Hip-hop makes a big song and dance about keeping it real. Musicals, in contrast, make a literal big song and dance, the whole point of which is to keep it unreal. Hip-hop is a genre where cool-guy posturing dominates, where earnestness is rarely rewarded; but musicals are sung once more with feeling. Musicals are also the dorkiest form of music in pop culture today, with the possible exception of Christian rock; they can be a lot of fun, and can occasionally be elevated to the level of art. But cool? Keeping it real? Yeah, no.

Mixing the two genres together, in other words, is not the easiest of tasks: it takes a demented genius like R. Kelly to pull off that kind of lunacy (see: the wonderfully bizarre ‘hip-hopera’, Trapped In The Closet). And while Macklemore certainly has detractors for good reasons, he doesn’t approach R. Kelly when it comes to inspired lunacy (or assault accusations).

From Broadway To Downtown And Back: Mixed Messages In The Music

Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’s method of combining hip-hop and Broadway is to simply alternate between the two. The song begins with a very Broadway jazz hands piano vamp, which abruptly cuts out as the old-school hip-hop beat kicks in. Rapping about mopeds ensues and, after a minute and a half or so, suddenly Eric Nally is going nuts singing a chorus reminiscent of a Broadway musical on meth. After that’s done, it’s hip-hop time again, and so on and so forth.

This alternation might have worked, if the transitions were deftly executed. But they’re not deftly executed.

‘Downtown’ is also very clearly inspired by ‘Uptown Funk’ — the title is a giveaway. If Bruno Mars wants to do some uptown funk, well how about Macklemore does a downtown rap? Sorted. Similarly, where ‘Uptown Funk’ was Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars trying to sound like early ’80s funk, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis very clearly signpost that they are aiming at sounding like the rap that was prevalent in the same era: old-school hip-hop.

Old-school hip-hop, as far as hip-hop historians are concerned, means hip-hop from before about 1984, when tougher-sounding acts like Run-DMC dramatically changed the course of the genre and its sound (aka, when Run-DMC got on MTV with the rock-rap fusion ‘Walk This Way’). The verses of ‘Downtown’ very clearly aim at old-school hip-hop — but Macklemore & Ryan Lewis don’t quite nail the genre the way that Mark Ronson and Bruno Mars nailed theirs with ‘Uptown Funk’. Without Ronson’s encyclopaedic musical knowledge, this take on a classic genre misses the mark.

This means that — somewhat inevitably — ‘Downtown’ is very obviously based around a close relative of the beat from Grandmaster Flash and the Furious Five’s megahit ‘The Message’, one of the two old-school hip-hop tracks (along with the Sugarhill Gang’s ‘Rapper’s Delight’) that even your mum probably knows. The influence isn’t meant to be subtle; they beat you over the head with it. But the obviousness of it all does mean that you think it rather than feel it – and beats are meant to be felt.

There’s also a few anachronisms from well after the early-eighties glory days of the genre. Those bells you hear over the verse at times are from Run-DMC’s 1986 ‘Peter Piper’; Macklemore’s lyrics refer to “1988 Mariah Carey hair“, and refer to keeping it “hella 1987“. These anachronisms, musically and lyrically, seem to contribute to the track feeling a little overdone and incoherent.

What Macklemore & Ryan Lewis do get right is the choice of guest rappers. In a recent XXL interview, old-school hip-hop legend Big Daddy Kane claimed that Macklemore’s manager had got in touch with him asking if he could procure some old-school rappers for a song with “a Furious Five feel” (i.e., ‘Downtown’). And Big Daddy Kane did a pretty good job of rounding up old-school rappers for Macklemore: he got Melle Mel, Grandmaster Caz, and Kool Moe Dee.

Kool Moe Dee’s inclusion makes sense: he begins his 1988 hit ‘Wild Wild West’ with the line “I used to live downtown”, and was one of the more celebrated old-school rappers (he appeared on the Treacherous Three’s ‘Body Rock’ in 1980). Grandmaster Caz most famously claims to have written Big Bank Hank’s rhymes in the Sugarhill Gang’s 1979 ‘Rapper’s Delight’. Finally, Melle Mel was actually the only member of the Furious Five who appears on the classic version of ‘The Message’; his presence on the track drives home the resemblance to the original with a comically oversized Acme-brand hammer.

Hip Hop, Mopeds And Gentrification: Mixed Messages In the Messages

Sadly, Macklemore only gives these icons a minor supporting role on his song, allowing them to briefly rap in unison. None of them receive songwriting credits, either. You get the distinct impression that they’re mostly on the track so Macklemore can pre-empt the think-pieces: “This isn’t racial appropriation; I’ve got Melle Mel”. Kool Moe Dee et al do look like they’re having fun, but seem mainly to be stoked that someone has remembered that they exist. As they themselves admit outright in the XXL interview, they’re in the song as prominently placed ornaments designed to lend a little authenticity to the white dude.

And in the end, that’s possibly the strangest thing about the old-school hip-hop sections of the song. Macklemore gets these old-school rappers on a track called ‘Downtown’ with a feel like ‘The Message’ — and makes them rap about mopeds.

In America, the “downtown” refers to urban areas that revolve around a CBD, and they’re inextricably linked with hip-hop. But American CBDs and the areas around them crumbled and stagnated when the middle class bought cars and left for the suburbs in the 1950s. The downtown milieu described in songs like ‘The Message’, circa 1982, is a claustrophobic, crime-ridden dystopia: “It’s like a jungle sometimes, it makes me wonder how I keep from going under“.

In contrast, Macklemore’s downtown mostly seems to be a place where he can buy and then ride his moped.

It’s a shame. This song could have been a golden opportunity for Melle Mel to reflect on how downtown has changed in the time since ‘The Message’. Perhaps Macklemore could have shown an awareness of his white privilege, and of the way the downtowns of the world have since been gentrified, leaving vast swathes of culture and history unmoored, dislocated and disadvantaged. Instead, he spends a large part of the clip zooming around obliviously on his moped, swearing at people as they mow their lawn.

Of course, there was promise in Macklemore’s opening spiel; I initially thought he was making a political comment, playing the part of a clueless idiot with money to burn — a dream customer for the moped dealer: “Oooh, it’s too real, chromed out mirror, I don’t need a windshield, banana seat…“. But as the lyrics progress in a fashion eerily reminiscent to the Beach Boys’ ‘Little Honda’, it becomes clear: Macklemore really is just genuinely enthusiastic about mopeds.

His overall vibe in the clip reminds me of Kramer riding around on the girls’ bike he got from Elaine.

The main problem with the lyric is that, after Macklemore’s bought the moped and established he’s having fun, he runs out of things to say. He throws in some lines about his thriftiness in buying a useful moped; he adds an odd section later in the second verse, where he raps about how “if I only had one helmet, I’d give it to you” while grabbing his crotch, Michael Jackson-style.

SUDDENLY, ERIC NALLY!

The conceit of the song is very distinctly petering out when SUDDENLY, ERIC NALLY! The former Foxy Shazam lead singer makes a memorable entrance in the video, riding in an ornate chariot being propelled by four motorbikes while wearing a sort of furry cape and a rakish moustache. He sings the word “downtown” a few times with preposterous enthusiasm, before the hip-hop beat drops out, and — voila! — we’re now in a very Broadway ‘Downtown’.

The proximate influence here is likely Petula Clark’s ‘Downtown’, in which she claims that “Things will be great when you’re downtown” (‘Downtown’ isn’t from a musical, but Clark did once star in one with Fred Astaire). The main difference here is that where Petula Clark gets excited about “the music of the traffic of the city,” Nally gets excited about “the warm embrace of a leather seat between your legs.”

Nally’s melody is an insidiously catchy earworm, and one big reason for the success of the song; the other two reasons likely come down to a) Macklemore’s brand name, and b) the fact that ‘Downtown’ is selling on iTunes for $1.19, while every other song in the top ten is $2.19.

Even in the fantasyland of the musicals, though, downtown has often been portrayed as a place to escape from, not to. In ‘Skid Row (Downtown)’ from the musical Little Shop Of Horrors – which starts with a jazz-hands piano vamp not unlike Macklemore’s — the lyrics speak for themselves: “Downtown, where the folks are broke / downtown, where your life’s a joke“. And, of course, the Macklemore music video features the brief threat of a knife fight, a la the downtown violence of West Side Story.

So given the retro vibe of the song, given the themes of the song’s influences, and given that Macklemore apparently just took a course in understanding his own white privilege, it’s odd that he seems to skip so lightly over this side of downtown in his lyrics.

Of course, in a funny way, the whole point of ‘Downtown’ is the fantasy of riding a moped through downtown circa 1983. That’s why everyone in the video is wearing retro clothes; why the lyrics reference the girl with the “1988 Mariah Carey hair” and the “Mom jeans”; and why they wheel out the old-school rappers. It’s also why the day-glo Broadway daydream of the choruses somehow give the song an emotional core, despite the amateurish execution: Macklemore’s ‘Downtown’ is a daydream. And if the emotional core is in the daydream, why not flick the switch to Vaudeville?

But perhaps the most strange and inconsistent thing of all about ‘Downtown’ is that despite the amateurishness of its execution, despite the ham-fisted genre mash, and despite Macklemore skating too-breezily over complex issues, the song still works.

That retro-cool moped-friendly fantasy version of ’80s downtown sure does seem like fun.

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Tim Byron completed a PhD in music psychology, plays in too many bands, and chronically overanalyses everything musical. He has written for Max TV, Mess+Noise, The Guardian, The Big Issue, and The Vine.