It’s after a long, full day of uni classes that I find myself questioning whether or not I have the energy to make it out to Boondall to the Entertainment Centre, to see the first show of the Australian leg of Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ This Unruly Mess I’ve Made World Tour. I decide that, yeah y’know what, if I don’t go I’ll just be an absolute couch potato lurking on Facebook all night – may as well right? Overall, I’m pretty happy that I did make the effort. 

I arrive and pick up my tickets from the box office, and am then shown to my seat. Aus hip-­‐ hop favourites Thundamentals are playing, which is a lovely greeting into the night. I take my seat towards the back end of their set, and while doing so, the distinctive “oooWOOoo, oooWOOooo, oooooOOOoooOOWEEOoooOOoo” cry from Matt Corby’s Brother plays. The Thundamental lads play their famous Like a Version cover of the song to a crowd that… didn’t seem to appreciate it very much.

This sort of set the tone of the crowd’s demographic, and as I looked around to the people sitting around me, it was confirmed. I was literally the only person (as far as I could tell) in my section, that was not under 15, and also not older than 30. In other words, there were a lot of families that had made the trip out to see their favourite, clean‐cut white rapper Macklemore. This was a bit off-­‐putting for me personally, especially having just returned from Splendour in the Grass, a festival full of genuine music lovers whose roots were not predominately grounded in the music that commercial radio plays. But still, hey, that’s not the end of the world, it’s just the pretentious music-­‐snob in me throwing shade. Fair bump, play on, on with the show.

Thundamentals wrap up their set with their two biggest hits Smiles Don’t Lie and Something I Said, which seemed to be received pretty positively, so that was nice.

After a good half hour or so of an intermission, the time had finally come. The lights went off, the crowd starts screaming, and on-­‐screen we are welcomed to scenes of nature and random ~indie~ filtered shots of cool places, as well as old bits of film showing mundane things like home videos, whilst a powerful high-­‐pitched female voice boomed over the speakers. Then the two men of the minute, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis grace the stage to screams from all corners of the room.

The show is kicked off by the first track from new album – Light Tunnels. Macklemore then introduced himself and Ryan, to then have a little chat with the crowd. Can I just say now, the way Macklemore interacts with his crowd and gets them involved with the show is just absolute A+ standard. You can tell he doesn’t mind the attention at all, controlling the energy, emotion and overall vibe of the place with superiority. Not only that, but his ramblings often always ended with a pretty impressive segue into a well‐known song.

For this first instance, he says how happy he is to be out in Australia etc, and how his friends and extended family wanted to come along; including his cousin, Brad Pitt. A joke, from which he slips straight into another new favourite – Brad Pitt’s Cousin.

The general chit chat between songs gave stage hands chances to set up stage props that went along with the song he was playing. After Brad Pitt’s Cousin, he jumped into Buckshot, and then into the Hottest 100-­‐winning song of 2013, Thriftshop. These were then followed by The Shades, Arrows (ft. Fences), and Wings.

The next four or so songs, and just about the middle chunk of the whole set, were really the meat in the sandwich that Macklemore & Ryan Lewis were serving up. After Wings, the song about basketball shoes, Macklemore jumps into a lengthy discussion on how appreciative he is to be in Australia, and that we as a country, “Really have it all figured out, other countries should follow the example Australia is setting.” He continues to preach that everyone should be accepted for who they are no matter what the colour of their skin is, what sexual orientation they are or what religion they follow, as these are all manmade differences, “Lines in the sand,” as he called them. After finishing his talk there’s about 5 seconds of silence, aaaaaaand queue the iconic piano riff that kicks off Same Love.

After Same Love, we get into Growing Up, a favourite from the new album which features vocals from fellow international superstar Ed Sheeran. He dedicates it to his 14­‐month-­old daughter, who is sleeping backstage. From this, we go into the epic 9-­minute long White Privilege II, which plays at a much louder volume throughout its melodic chant, “There's blood in the streets, no justice, no peace. No racist beliefs, no rest 'til we're free.” Then, as a segue back into the somewhat lighter-­entertainment songs is St. Ides. The rest of the show pretty much consists of songs that most of the crowd could sing along to. Starting with White Walls, to Let’s Eat, right through to the 2012 classic Can’t Hold Us. After this, Macklemore introduces the entire team name by­ name, they all give a bow and walk off stage. However, with the lights not coming back on, it was known there would be an encore. There was.

A lengthy introductory video of Macklemore’s alter ego “Raven Bowie” (a play on the late David Bowie’s Ziggy Stardust) plays, and out runs Raven in an over-­the-top mullet wig and loud clothing, to sing 2012’s And We Danced. This was then followed by the two biggest hit singles from This Unruly Mess I’ve Made, being: Dance Off, and Downtown to end the show. Although Macklemore’s latest offering hasn’t been as much my personal cup of tea as his previous Grammy‐award winning debut The Heist was, I have to give it to the guy – he does put on a very entertaining show.

- Jakob Rosenblatt