During an interview with The Source, Big Daddy Kane had listened to Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ latest social message song in “White Privilege II”, before giving his comments on the song and white privilege as a whole. Hit the jump for what the hip-hop legend had to say.
“From what I was hearing, I wasn’t crystal clear on what he was saying. To me, it sounded like if he was condemning the White privilege, the privileges White people have in Hip Hop. It kind of sounded like that, but then again, because he’s a clever thinker, it could be the type of thing where he’s spoofing what Black America thinks of White artists. It could have been that. I’m not really sure what he meant by it.”
Aside from Macklemore’s song, he discusses the issues and inequalities of having white privilege today in society:
“If you’re White then yes, you have White privilege. It’s there for the taking if you choose to use it, you know, just keeping it 100. With that being said though, I mean that’s no reason to look down on White people in society. It’s a reason to look down on the laws of this country because that’s the way its structured and the way these people work. It’s like this, you can go to a city that has a predominately Black police force and because they’re told these are the people to profile, a Black person can be profiled by their own race. They’re told these are the people to profile. It’s like do White privilege exist? Absolutely. In the case of passing judgment, you have to make sure that you’re passing judgement on the right person.”
If you remember back in August 2015, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis dropped their first single in nearly 3 years “Downtown”, which featured some of hip-hop’s pioneers in Melle Mel, Kool Moe Dee, and Grandmaster Caz. Big Daddy Kane made headlines through his Instagram (the post is now deleted), for supporting the song and for applauding Macklemore to put on legends of the game when nobody else did:
“I don’t see one artist in the game that put Melle Mel, Kool Moe Dee or Grandmaster Caz on their new song or let them perform on the VMA’s (Including Me) but people wanna have a problem with @macklemore for paying homage to them? We don’t acknowledge our own & get mad when another color does.”
What did you think of “White Privilege II”? Drop your comments below.
