Back in 2013, Macklemore was seemingly at the top of his game, having just released the immensely successful album
The Heist the year prior, complete with its fair share of hits and an incredibly controversial Grammy win for Rap Album of the Year (with his competition being
good kid, M.A.A.D city). As someone growing up in this era, let me tell you that "Thrift Shop" did certainly get a hell of a lot of airplay. Ever since his collaboration with Ryan Lewis, though, Macklemore has effectively disappeared from the public conscious, with his previous album in 2017's
GEMINI being pretty poorly received - Hell, you could argue that he's the only musician whose career was ruined by an award after the
good kid fiasco, which I won't give my opinion on because of course I think Kendrick should've won. Tangent aside, he's back after this six-year hiatus with a new album, and in that time you may expect some changes in the Macklemore sound - unfortunately, this plays like a compromise between old and new, and the end results certainly leave something to be desired. I don't want to jump the gun and call this a terrible album, but
BEN is about as generic of a rap album as one can get. It's safely produced, most of the songs bleed into one another, and a lot of the features ultimately leave little staying power; opening your album with a song featuring the maligned Tones and I is already a bad sign, but that's not even the worst case. Only "HEROES" is a real standout with its crunchy beat and themes of bad influences - DJ Premiere's feature also greatly contributes to the overall "feel" of the song. Everything else ranges from indifference to the supremely patronizing "LOST/SUN COMES UP", even if Macklemore is coming from a good place. You need a whole lot more than a good place to make a song work, and with
BEN there's little below the surface level.
😴
Listen to BEN.
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