Macklemore & Ryan Lewis

“THIS UNRULY MESS I’VE MADE”

Self released

Macklemore feels really bad that he’s Caucasian. In advance of this new album, he and Ryan Lewis released a 9-minute single, “White Privilege II,” that questions his place in the BlackLivesMatter movement and disses Elvis and Iggy Azalea for being “so plastic, you’ve heisted the magic” of hip-hop culture.

In 2014, when the duo’s “The Heist” trumped Kendrick Lamar’s “Good Kid, M.A.A.D City” for the rap album of the year Grammy, he Instagrammed a text he’d sent Lamar — “You got robbed.”

Though there’s substance to these gestures, Macklemore is still just hogging the limelight, making black matters about him, how it affects him. If he feels bad about being in hip-hop — he’s from Seattle — he should become a grunge act. Down about that Grammy? Give it to Lamar. Upset about making money? Give it away.

Macklemore is the guy who during “Same Love” gave gay people the OK for being gay. That’s who he is — the validator for things that don’t need his straight, white validation.

Yet “This Unruly Mess I’ve Made” is just that: a screwy, preachy pop-hop record with a bossy dude who sounds like Vin Diesel talking ham-handedly about addictive prescription drugs (“Kevin”) and teen drinking habits (“St. Ides”). When not giving old-school black rap legends tiny cameos, he’s talking about his youth as a graffiti tagger (“Buckshot”).

Come to think of it, that means he’s been cribbing from black culture for his own devices since he was a kid. Nice.

ON TOUR: May 26, 2016 — Veterans Memorial Coliseum, Portland; www.ticketmaster.com.

— A.D. Amorosi,

The Philadelphia Inquirer