Macklemore's "Ten Thousand Hours"

I spent some time in Seattle last summer where many of my friends were deep in the throes of "Macklemore Mania." If you don't know about Macklemore, he's a white, American, Seattle-based rap artist who is suddenly hitting the big time based in part on the sophistication of his lyric about topics not normally associated with rap e.g. "Thriftstore" which promotes buying used clothes for cheap rather than over-priced fashion, and "Same Love," an incredibly beautiful song which supports gay love and gay marriage (although he is not gay).

But the song that I wish to focus on here and which, in a way, relates to our class, is "Ten Thousand Hours." The term originally came from the idea that to be truly great at something, be it chess, or a sport, or a musical instrument, takes about ten years of dedicated practice. This adds up to about ten thousand hours, an idea that Malcolm Gladwell popularized in his book, Outliers.

For Macklemore, this is what  is what it took for him to finally succeed, and in the song he tells others that if you want to get good at something, you have to put in the work. As he sings it in relationship to great artists:

See, I observed Escher

I love Basquiat

I watched Keith Haring

You see I study art

The greats weren't great because at birth they could paint

The greats were great because they paint a lot

To see all the words along along with the soundtrack, click here.

For more on this topic, there is also what is known as Deliberate Practice, the notion that a great deal of the right kind of practice is required to be truly good at something.