Meet XP, Macklemore’s Friend Who Wrote All Over ‘This Unruly Mess I’ve Made’
The Seattle mainstay dishes on his contributions to Mack’s sophomore LP.
Four years after Macklemore and Ryan Lewis’ Grammy Award-winning debut album, The Heist, the Seattle duo is back with This Unruly Mess I’ve Made. Over the past two years, the “Downtown” creators have rigorously put together their latest set, working with some hip-hop mainstays, like Chance the Rapper, as well as talented local artists, including XP.
Tyler Andrews, better known as Xperience, has been Ben Haggerty’s close confidant and friend for 13 years. Before Macklemore became the thrift shop connoisseur, he and XP collaborated as Step Cousins, and a few of their tracks appeared on Mack’s The Language of My World. They reunited on This Unruly Mess I’ve Made, with XP receiving writing credits on six songs, including “Let’s Eat,” “Brad Pitt’s Cousin,” and the controversial “White Privilege II.”
Genius spoke with XP before he headed on the European leg of the This Unruly Mess I’ve Made tour to dig deeper into the tracks he’s worked on, the easygoing process of making music with his friends, and the continuation of the “White Privilege II” dialogue.
We were just fucking around, pretty much freestyling. I was saying some funny shit. [Ryan Lewis] was like, ‘Yo, for the hook, we want something that’s gonna bang in the club. We should do something like you go to the club and try to get in by saying you’re Brad Pitt’s cousin. Like nobody really knows who Macklemore is.‘ I started saying, ‘All the Angelinas, if you got it let me see it.’ And he started flipping. Like, ‘Yo, we gotta lay that down!’”
On “Let’s Eat”
Ben was like, ‘Yo, I’m doing this song about not being able to keep a diet going.’ At the time, we were all trying to get fit, and I was doing the little seven-minute ab thing on my phone. Ryan was like, ‘You should do this paleo diet.’ We were on it and losing weight. I came back from the cabin, and it was over with. I was like, ‘Chicken motherfuckin’ Alfredo. Steak. Crepes and cake.’ Of course, it feels good to be healthy, but people are who we are, and not everybody needs to be judged all the time. Sometimes a motherfucker wanna eat.”
A lot of people like Jamila Woods, Nikkita, and Hollis had input. Mostly just having conversation. Him and Ryan being like, ‘How should we approach this? And is it OK to say some of these things that I want to say?’ Once they got into the process of making the song, the one thing I wrote is the chant. ‘The blood in the streets, no justice, no peace.‘ I wrote that for the ladies to sing. We recorded a huge choir—like 10 people, male and female. I helped direct that choir since I have Baptist church experience.
I was drawing from our conversations. I’m sure from the rallies I’ve been to, too. If anything, it’s a war cry, and it’s more spiritual than anything. Probably something I channel—the shit is in my blood. People before me. My whole family is growing through this shit. This ain’t anything new under the sun. It was almost 500 years old. It’s a part of right now. It’s a part of the past. That’s what we felt and what was happening at the time.”
