Ire for the Seattle rapper Macklemore has obscured the thrift shopper’s pedigree. Before Macklemore was the poster boy for mainstream rap’s identity crisis, he was just another inoffensive, independent rapper, with a facile flow, a pleasant attitude and a real love for the genre of music he had chosen to work within. But give the guy a couple of catchy beats and suddenly he’s sprung to life as the vanilla oppressor of rap’s traditionalists, too approachable by half and more than willing to lecture hip-hop on everything it’s doing wrong.
Those irritated by Macklemore will probably not think any better of his fellow Seattle resident Grieves, the cosmetic similarities between the two former collaborators actually doing a disservice to the former’s skills as a rapper. Both artists do share a jones for sentimental subject matter, rhyming with a down-to-earth demeanor that can border on self-congratulatory. Grieves, born Benjamin Laub, also sings his own hooks, and the piano-heavy beats he’s particular to place him somewhere between Slug and Jason Mraz on the musical spectrum.
Winter and the Wolves is Grieves’ fourth album, promoted, like a kind of musical companion to the Liam Neeson movie The Gray, as being “about the instinctual fight for survival.” That struggle mostly makes itself known through reflective songs about the rapper’s life, including a batch concerned with the events of childhood and a now-defunct relationship. Laub is an intensely honest songwriter and the album is shot through with raw emotion, even when the subject in question seems innocuous.
Grieves has a gift for melody and his best songs rise above their subject matter with catchy hooks and amiable, keyboard and guitar-laden production courtesy of San Jose’s B. Lewis. “Astronauts", a song about the losses that come with maturity, has a very sticky chorus. “Kidding Me", while it has many of the self-pitying qualities that hurt Laub’s songs about relationships, has a soulful beat and a syrupy Mayer Hawthorne-esque hook. But both songs are plagued by the unshakeable self-importance that dogs the record, with lines like “you don’t have to be a kid to believe or see potential in a pile of leaves.” There’s no doubt that Grieves believes in the things that he’s rapping about; the problem is that he doesn’t seem to have any kind of self-awareness or sense of humor in doing so.
What is it about earnestness that can seem so irksome? To start, in a genre built on coded language and slang, the relative approachability of Grieves’ music feels facile, his lyrics and production simple in a genre that has historically prized complexity. Add that to the fact that Grieves is a passable technical rapper, rather than a particularly compelling one, prone to rattling off lines like “I’ve been a bad seed ever since the ovaries” and you’re not left with much to sink your teeth into. The album is straightforward, but often so much so that it can seem as if there’s nothing below the surface.
Grieves can be tough to bear when he’s cheerful, but he’s far worse when upset. The break-up song “Over You” is the prototypical lament of the nice guy done wrong. I couldn’t help but compare the song to Fiona Apple’s “Werewolf", a track that also uses a series of metaphors to explore a break-up; each comparison Apple makes seems representative of the actual complexity of a real relationship. By contrast, Laub’s most interesting move is the final line, “I just don’t know how to get over you,” presented like a Shyamalan twist, as if we weren’t expected to recognize the bitterness that the song is basted in.
The blandness of the subject matter with which Grieves works makes his songs broadly relatable: it’s easy to imagine listeners identifying with the feelings he expresses on Winter and the Wolves, especially given that a large percentage of the songs are legitimately catchy*.* Rap like this has always existed and, again, it's largely inoffensive—but when it becomes popular, it threatens to dislodge more complicated music. Macklemore’s success sets a precedent: it will not be shocking if one of Grieves’ new songs makes it to radio playlists. Hip-hop has traditionally been a forward-thinking space, where either lyricists or producers can explore difficult musical territory. The success of music that does not make use of the genre in this way, threatens rap’s progressive identity above anything else.
