Nevertheless, I found myself feeling a deep emotional connection to Macklemore’s philosophy of fighting for gay rights and battling inner demons throughout “The Heist”, a bizzare connection I could not explain with my middle-school mind.

At the time that I first encountered “The Heist” as a relatively sheltered middle schooler, I hadn’t devoted a lot of time to thinking about those things. Human rights, substance abuse and consumption contribute to the central themes of the album. Before I experienced “Wing$,” I never contemplated why I preferred Nike over Under Armour. Prior to hearing “Thrift Shop,” Goodwill was only a place to donate clothes, not to buy them. I learned what “lean” meant after listening to “Otherside” and googling the abuse of cough syrup. No one in my social circle was openly gay until I got to high school, but “Same Love” introduced me to and harnessed my empathy and support for same-sex marriage, an issue I had no connection to at the time. In my middle-school world of Little League softball and sleepovers, I found myself listening to Macklemore’s (and Ryan Lewis’s) discussion of addiction, greed and failure throughout the album “The Heist.” Tuning out my parents’ car ride conversations and team chatter on the bus rides to basketball games, I let my headphones become the vessel into Macklemore’s much darker musings about critical issues I had not yet realized or experienced.

Growing up macklemore