The Re-Education of Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

How do two white guys from Seattle atone for coming out of nowhere to commercially dominate hip-hop? As Macklemore & Ryan Lewis return after a turbulent four-year absence, they’re determined to speak out on race — and, perhaps, sacrifice mega-success entirely.

- Toure

Macklemore, the 32-year-old born Ben Haggerty, is like a black comedian’s caricature of a white rapper: He looks like a real-life Bart Simpson. He graduated from Evergreen State College. And -- here’s the punchline -- he’s insecure about his white privilege.

Sitting in his room at New York’s Hudson Hotel one Wednesday morning, he wears pristine caramel-brown suede boots, fashionably ripped jeans and a green corduroy shirt over a tee depicting the new-age artist Yanni. In January, with his producer and musical partner Ryan Lewis, 27, Macklemore previewed the new albumThis Unruly Mess I’ve Made by dropping a nine-minute song called “White Privilege II.” Macklemore is, at first blush, the wrong guy to tackle white privilege, because he benefits so much from it. Macklemore & Ryan Lewis were just an indie Seattle-area rap duo in 2012 when their playful, consumerist-critiquing single “Thrift Shop” unexpectedly rocketed to No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100, where it sat for six weeks, eventually selling 7.9 million copies, according to Nielsen Music.

Very quickly, the duo found a mass pop audience through a black art form. The Heist, their debut album, hit No. 2 on the Billboard 200 and has sold 1.5 million copies. They’ve since sent five more singles into the top 20 of the Hot 100, and “Thrift Shop” was the only one to win any notable amount of urban radio airplay, peaking at No. 33 on the radio-based Mainstream R&B/Hip-Hop chart -- although it set a record on the Hot Rap Songs chart, where it spent 45 weeks in the top 10.