Chart-topping US rapper Macklemore has launched a brand new observe, Hind’s Corridor, which supplies strong assist to Palestine in addition to these protesting at US universities in opposition to Israel’s exercise in Gaza.
Hind’s Corridor is known as after the Columbia College constructing, renamed from Hamilton Corridor by occupying scholar protesters to reference Hind Rajab, a six-year-old baby killed in Gaza.
“If college students in tents posted on the garden / Occupying the quad is absolutely in opposition to the regulation / And a cause to name within the police and their squad / The place does genocide land in your definition, huh?” he raps, referring to the police crackdown in opposition to protests.
In addition to condemning Israel’s marketing campaign in Gaza, Columbia college students are calling for his or her college to divest from corporations linked to Israel – a name that has been repeated in different campuses throughout the US. Final week New York police arrested greater than 100 individuals protesting at Columbia, together with some occupying Hamilton Corridor. Greater than 2,000 individuals have been arrested over US campus protests.
In Hind’s Corridor, Macklemore characterises Israel as “a state that’s gotta depend on an apartheid system to uphold an occupying violent historical past been repeating for the final 75 [years]”, and says he has skilled assist from Jewish individuals in solidarity with the pro-Palestine protests. “We see the lies in them, claiming it’s antisemitic to be anti-Zionist / I’ve seen Jewish brothers and sisters on the market and driving in solidarity and screaming ‘Free Palestine’ with them”.
He addresses Joe Biden, saying “blood is in your arms”, and says he is not going to be voting for him later this yr.
He had beforehand been a supporter of the Democrats, showing alongside Barack Obama to debate the opioid disaster and opposing Donald Trump with chants at concert events. He launched a track, Wednesday Morning, after Trump’s 2016 election win with the lyrics: “No time for apathy, no extra tears and no complaining / Gotta combat more durable for the subsequent 4 and what we’re confronted with.”
Macklemore additionally criticises the music business for not being extra outspoken in the course of the conflict in Gaza. “The music business’s quiet, complicit of their platform of silence,” he raps, including “I need a ceasefire, fuck a response from Drake” – a reference to the meat between Drake and Kendrick Lamar which has consumed the US music business in current weeks.
The stress between the rappers’ verbal battle and the actual battle in Gaza has not gone unnoticed elsewhere: “It’s Exhausting to Care A few Rap Warfare within the Center of a Actual One,” ran the headline of a Rolling Stone article final week.
Macklemore is probably nonetheless greatest recognized for lighthearted songs akin to 2012’s Thrift Store, which topped the US and UK charts, however he’s additionally recognized for socially aware materials. His observe Identical Love voiced assist for same-sex marriage and the LGBTQ+ group whereas criticising hip-hop tradition for homophobia, whereas Wing$ lamented poverty and criticised consumerism.
He appeared incognito at Black Lives Matter protests and in 2016 examined his place as a white particular person on the protests and in rap tradition extra broadly – which had brought on him to be accused of cultural appropriation – with the observe White Privilege II.
