When rapper Macklemore stepped off the stage after his history-making performance at the Grammys on Sunday, he stepped right into a shitstorm over some questionable and mostly dumb tweets he sent back in 2009. Now, people are asking a lot of questions about what his real views are and it's raised a lot of controversy. Not to worry though! I am here to get to the bottom of all of this.
I drank wine all night and randomly clicked around on his old Twitter messages waiting for my Easy Mac and Cheese to heat up performed extensive investigative research and managed to dig up some of the most important tweets from a rap artist since this happened, and am ready to break them down for you so we can properly analyze this shitstorm one pile of shit at a time.
By now, we're all familiar with this tweet, the tweet that launched a thousand angry Thought Catalog posts.
One of the more important things to note about this tweet is that he apparently used a SIDEKICK to send it. Sidekicks were AWESOME! You remember Sidekicks, don't you? And I found out that they apparently still make them! You can get a Sidekick right now. Isn't that awesome! Helloooo?
OK. That tweet seems gross, stupid and much like the Ace of Base tattoo I almost got in 1995, totally unnecessary. Also, why do people feel the need to clarify when you say you love New York that you are not gay? What is up with that? Do you really have friends that are so batshithomophobic that they're going to be all "OMG duuuuude you love a city; are you gay now?" Get some better friends. Those people are probably idiots and are going to do nothing but try and borrow money from you for stupid shit, like buying Slap Chops in bulk. But as many people pointed out, the rapper's tweet was most likely a frustrated response to the very homophobic "no homo" bullshit. OK. So there's one tweet accounted for.
The Washington Post looked into all of this and here's what they had to say:
Of Macklemore's 15,510 tweets, fewer than two dozen ever use the word "gay." They are almost exclusively about gay marriage. (In November 2011, Macklemore tweeted to a fellow musician that he unfollowed him because "you still say 'gay' on Twitter … as in 'that was gay.'")....
The obvious takeaway, of course, is that pulling isolated, context-free snippets out of an artist's Twitter feed and using that as an argument to undermine his integrity/entire career is neither fair nor particularly reliable. But it's also yet another good reminder that the things you send out into the Internet ether stay there in perpetuity, even after you become a wildly popular Grammy-winning musician (… or presidential candidate, or parent, or whatever else. It's honestly difficult to imagine how the Twitter/Facebook generation will survive scrutiny or opposition research later in life.)
Hmm. But wait—there's more batshitcrazy tweets!
Oh. Dear. Well, maybe he's just not a baseball fan. Maybe that baseball game was blocking his view of some pretty flowers on the hill. I don't know. Pulling stuff out of my ass here on this one. Anyway, people were getting pretty pissed off about this one.
Oh, but no wait actually (speaking of pulling things out of context) this tweet references a charity event called "Dykes vs. Drag Queens" in the rapper's hometown of Seattle that benefited a local LGBTQ support group.
Well, that was no fun. Let's see what else we can find in the rapper's ancient Twitter archives. I'm sure they can't get any more off the wall than the first two. Probably.
Oh God. Let's just leave that one alone. That's a whole can of worms right there. I do not want to have to read Macklemore's 9/11 Truther Tumblr page. I feel like I've been forced to read enough of those in my lifetime already. They start to make my nerves shaky after awhile and then I start thinking that the government is actually behind why my local grocery store stopped selling Chocolate with Marshmallow Pillsbury Toaster Strudel. This tweet is probably a reference to a song of Macklemore's where he raps as former President George W. Bush. "Bush knocked down the towers" is a line from a song by Immortal Technique called "Bin Laden," which includes a sample from Jadakiss's "Why?" and that's what Macklemore was calling out. And I got to go visit Rap Genius to learn all about it! Am I hipster now? Do I get a hat or something? Like me when I tweet all those lyrics to Gordon Lightfoot songs. They make me misty-eyed, you guys.
This tweet is about a class he took. We may be on to something here.
Oh my God. "Working a speech about the benefits of thrift shopping." In 2009. And you thought "Thrift Shop" was just a catchy, fluke hit. The man has been highly trained sleeper agent for Goodwill this whole time. Wake up, sheeple.
Let's move on to something where he can't possibly go wrong! Here's a tweet about Drake. Everybody loves Drake! He's Jimmy Brooks, for Pete's sake! How can this possibly turn out bad?
Oh poor Macklemore. This tweet is going to make for some awkward moments at awards shows. We know how good Drake is handling all that.
OK, but let's forget all of that and get on to the single most important, vital tweet I dug up doing my extensive research. We are about to tear the roof off the entire Macklemore Twitter scandal with this reveal right here.
Get ready to be blown away:
WHOA. He was friends with a wolf? What wolf? How did he meet the wolf? How did he know that the wolf actually acknowledged being his friend? I met a wolf once, but he was a total asshole. I would never, ever have been friends with him. And what happened to the wolf? Are they still friends now? Did Macklemore get famous and forget his wolf friend? How famous could you be to not give a shit about being friends with a wolf? That's simply not possible. I will continue investigating and hopefully bring you more details on this rapper-wolf friendship that occurred in 2009. I stay on top of the important things here. I will demand answers until I can bring you readers the truth.
To be fair, everyone would be excited about this. It's a wolf. And it's your friend. That's an all caps tweet moment if there ever was one.
Well, that was a blast. Now I'm off to go sort through some of M.C. Hammer's old Facebook posts from 2008 to see what dirt I can dig up there.
Image via Getty Images