Family Business

I thought this would go away, but it won't. Macklemore! I was sour on him from the beginning, and didn't really think about why until my friend came out as pro Macklemore. He thought that Macklemore's "Same Love" was amazing and asked who else had made that kind of track. I don't know, but I simply thought his rapping sucked, ever since hearing "Wings" through a basketball blog.

I tried to open my mind and get into Macklemore, but to be honest, I kind of hate listened to it. The topics he covers, while perhaps authentic to him, rings inauthentic and calculated to me. Insert eye roll. So thus, I was highly appalled the other day when I caught myself bobbing along to the beginning of "Thrift Shop," before I realized what I was doing. Damn those horns are catchy aren't they?

There's a lot of problems with Macklemore, besides his crappy rapping, but I'll link below. I can't decide if he's one step above or below Michael Franti for me, so for now I'll call it even. And of course, I feel the same way about all the Harlem Shake business. Although I have to admit that I've seen the Miami Heat one quite a few times, as there's just too much good stuff in there. Mario Chalmers as Super Mario, Ray Allen as Phantom of the Opera, Lebron is the king, the opening Birdman swoop in. Chris Bosh as Chris Bosh. I can't stop watching. (Do Macklemore and Chris Anderson look alike or can I just not tell white people apart?)

Keep in mind I have been wrong about hating before. But I can come around. Somehow, back in 2005, I managed to hate on Kanye, John Legend, and Beyonce all in one post. Plus Harold and Kumar. But that one I still stand by.

• A Hip-Hop Moment, but Is It Authentic?
• Race + Hip-Hop + LGBT Equality: On Macklemore's White Straight Privilege
• Long Before The Harlem Shake, We Did The Shimmy
• "Thrift Shop" Is First Indie Hit to Top Charts in Nearly Two Decades

Tragically, Posterous is shutting down, thus putting my podcast at risk. Clearly, choosing Posterous was the wrong move years ago. Luckily I exported everything over to Blogger, my OTP, and really should have done so from the beginning. So now You, Me, Us lives on, albeit in semi non-working form as some of the archived individual posts are sort of messed up. I'll have to go back to fix them one by one. Luckily I am a man used to such menial tasks. The best way to access them for now is to click by month and use the new handy dandy exFM player.

Season Two should be ending soon, as I reconsider what to do with it. Corralling guests has been tough work -- apparently an out of the blue "Hey, wanna Skype right now?!" message is not enough advance notice for some -- so perhaps I will just have recurring guests.

We did a freeflowing episode the other day, "Three Man Weave," with the highlight coming at the end when we gush about Kevin's baby blog. You'll get an exclusive insider's look at it by following along.

• New site: youmeuspod.blogspot.com
• Best of Season One

And speaking of podcasts, I used to listen to David Choe's old one, Koreans Gone Bad, but right when I started getting into it, KGB shut down. Now Choe's back with a new series, DVDASA. I actually haven't started it, as I'm a bit afraid of its contents, plus I may too young for this. But I feel compelled.

"'Do you care about your life? Do you care about your career? Do you care at all about your romantic partners feelings? Basically do you care about important things that make you human?... we don't,' Choe says. 'If you want to hear what self destructive nuclear nervous meltdown group suicide sounds like, if you want to hear popular mainstream guests get verbally ear raped and have their careers disappear within minutes, then tune in every Tuesday to all the fun and hilarity of what is DVDASA.'"