The Heist – Macklemore, Ryan Lewis

Year	Album	Artist	Stars	Score	Genre
2012	The Heist	Macklemore & Ryan Lewis	★½	33	Hip-Hop	Pop Hip-Hop

I remember the first time I heard “Thrift Shop” on the radio. I was in the car with someone who didn’t like hip-hop but proclaimed, “This song is so fun!” The second time I heard it (about 2 hours later) a different person in the car said “They’re playing this on the radio? That’s weird, it’s been out for months. This guy’s stuff is good.” Then I heard it at a party that night and people started talking about how it was the best song of the year. Then I heard it at a gas station the next day. Then I heard it inside a Target. Then I heard it at a club the next week and drunk people went crazy all four times the DJ played it over a 2-hour period.

That’s how big it was and how quickly Macklemore went from an online, underground rapper who hip-hop bros thought was pretty cool, to a superstar that people, who didn’t even listen to hip-hop, would name drop to try to be cool. 

“Thrift Shop” is a fine, fun, catchy song. I heard it enough that first week for me to never need to hear it again. And when “Can’t Hold Us” got big four or five months later, and was featured in commercials for new television shows and bumper music for every sports game, I got my fill of that too. 

Macklemore and Ryan Lewis stayed hot all the way to the 2014 Grammy Awards, where they won Best New Artist, Best Rap Song, Best Rap Performance and, finally, Best Rap Album, over genre titans Drake, Kanye West and Jay Z, as well as Kendrick Lamar’s good kid, m.A.A.d city, the latter of which was considered as sure fire a thing to win the category as any record in recent memory. 

And just like that, all hip-hop fans turned on Macklemore & Ryan Lewis, because those few fun songs everyone had enjoyed the past year and a half couldn’t hold a candle to even the worst tracks on good kid, m.A.A.d city, which had become such a slow building phenomena since it was released in fall 2012 that if you liked hip-hop, you couldn’t help but stumble into it and fall in love with it by the time The Grammy Awards arrived.

It’s not Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ fault that they won an award that people frequently claim is meaningless and that’s selected by a voter base made up of people who don’t even listen to hip-hop beyond what crosses over to popular radio.

But retrospectively listening to The Heist (now aptly named), it’s even harder to stomach than it originally was, because beyond the first five tracks (which include the album’s three hit singles) the album slowly gets worse and worse.

It’s a warning sign when you click an artist and the main genres are listed as “Pop Rap” then“Comedy Hip-Hop” and then… “Conscious Hip-Hop”?  They get the pop part right, but Macklemore isn’t particularly funny (what is funny is how some of the beats on the back half of the record almost sound intentionally unserious and unprofessional), and his lines aren’t particularly intellectual either beyond basic social commentary.  

“Thrift Shop” and “Can’t Hold Us” are fun in small doses. “Same Love” calls out homophobia in hip-hop, which was a pretty big deal at the time and got Macklemore a reputation for being thoughtful, deep lyrics even though the actual message and lyrics kind of do the bare minimum. However, the piano track, warm backing vocals and lovely Mary Lambert feature are well done and make it worthwhile. The production and vocal medley on the chorus of “Thin Line” reminds me of The National’s “Apartment Story” bridge for some reason, which makes me like it. Other than that though, the rest of the project is forgettable, bland, sometimes grating and almost offensively uninspired. 

Macklemore I’m sure still has pop fans who he’s held since the beginning, and he’s had other radio and  streaming hits since 2012, but in the hip-hop world, The Heist wasn’t particularly special then,  and it certainly isn’t now.