Protest Song Of The Week: 'Fucked Up' By Macklemore
These days it is rare for an artist to release a protest song that receives more than a million listens on any streaming platform. But rapper Macklemore, who previously had two Billboard Hot 100 number one singles, is the exception to the rule. He now has three protest songs in the past year that have been listened to by millions.
“Hind’s Hall,” an anthem for Palestinian solidarity activism which Macklemore released in May 2024, has 40 million plays on Spotify. It has nearly 4.3 million views on YouTube, and all proceeds from the song were donated to the United Nations Relief and Works Agency (UNRWA) to aid Palestinians displaced by the Israeli and United States governments’ ethnic cleansing campaign.
A follow-up, “Hind’s Hall 2,” released in September 2024, featured Palestinian American singer-rapper Anees Mokhiber, Amer Zahr and Palestinian American comedian Amer Zahr. Also, MC Abdul, a Gaza teen rapper who became a viral sensation during the early months of Israel’s assault on Gaza, contributed a verse. It has 3.3 million plays on Spotify, and two YouTube videos for the song (one a lyric video) have over 1 million views. Again, all proceeds were donated to UNRWA.
Though the videos for “Hind’s Hall” and “Hind’s Hall 2” accumulated millions of views, they were both age-restricted by the platform operated by Google. Often this happens to pro-Palestinian content and is designed to suppress viewership by forcing people to log into YouTube in order to view the videos.
Macklemore’s support for Palestinians cost him in a multi-billion dollar music industry, where the vast majority of artists have remained silent. In 2024, he was disinvited from a music festival in Nevada. Born in Seattle, the city’s baseball, hockey, and soccer teams responded to paused his involvement with the teams.
That brings us to “Fucked Up,” released on February 14. The song recalls the first two weeks of President Donald Trump’s return to the White House. Macklemore acknowledges the collective struggle for justice and liberation has not felt this bleak in a long time, and he ends with a call to those who feel defeated to not give up the fight.
“The world’s on fire, we don’t own the water, y’all/Inmates hired for a couple dollars, y’all/New era ushered, but white supremacy is still in charge,” Macklemore raps. “Talking colonizing Gaza from the White House lawn/But the people mobbing and we ain’t backing off.”
Macklemore connects the slaughter of Palestinians children to the economic pain that American are experiencing. Then he adds, “And you know how the West thinks: it’s all about the West banks/Call a ceasefire, then start annexing the West Bank/How you think Israel gets money for the best tanks?”
For this bar of lyrics, Macklemore flashes the logos for Bank of America, Chase, and Wells Fargo.
He highlights the censorship of #FreePalestine posts and the suppression of news that would show the widespread resistance to oligarchy and colonialism around the world.
Macklemore plainly states in the chorus that Trump, Prime Minister Benjamin Netanyahu, and other global elites have him “fucked up.” Then he calls out Elon Musk for what many of us recognized as a Nazi salute.
As the song barrels to the end, Macklemore celebrates the resilience of millions of Palestinians who returned home to Gaza. It was a rare scene of hope that the U.S. and Israeli governments are working on extinguishing at this very hour.
But as Macklemore concludes: The next four years, it’s time to ride/Fuck ICE, free Congo, Sudan and Palestine/If you still haven’t said shit about the genocide/Know your grandkids one day are gonna ask you, ‘Why?’”
This song, like “Hind’s Hall” and “Hind’s Hall 2,” was age-restricted by YouTube. But after 11 days, it had 1.3 million views on YouTube and over 750,000 plays on Spotify.
Macklemore has nearly 10 million subscribers on YouTube, 30 million monthly listeners on Spotify, and 2 million followers on the platform still often referred to as Twitter. He’s set an example for anyone who ever had significant popularity in entertainment and put numerous artists who claim to stand for human rights to shame.
At the same time, by inviting Palestinian artists to join him in creating protest music, he is broadening the audience for those with the fortitude to produce songs for liberation.
Listen to “Fucked Up” by Macklemore:
Note: Google does not allow the embedding of age-restricted videos, but if you’d like to watch the video for “Fucked Up,” watch it on YouTube.