Mac Miller at UW this spring

"I'm white boy awesome."

Hip Hop rising star Mac Miller is going to play a show at the University of Wyoming April 13. Students get in for free, public gets in for $20.

Things that are going to be going over well at the show:

* Converse shoes

* Clear Eyes drops

* Tim Lincecum jerseys

* Tribal armband tattoos

* Flat billed - strap back hats

* Flat billed hats of teams that are not in the Rockies

* Beanies with balls on the top

* A lot of guys saying the word "bro"

This tour looks a bit like a take off of one Mac was doing with Wiz Khalifa, except the downgrade here is significant with Sean Kingston filling in. Still, this should be a really fun show in an area that is starved for mainstream music.

It is especially interesting to me that this announcement comes shortly after my very own University of Northern Colorado announced that Macklemore would be playing a show on campus around the same time. Obvious comparisons aside, white boys appropriating hip hop swagger mixed with hipster flair, the two make for an interesting comparison.

Miller is almost purely party music. When he isn't referencing weed multiple times in one song, he talks about sex booze and getting wild  all with a hyper stylized sense of nostalgia. Other topics include how cool his clothes are and how much he really really likes weed. Did I mention he likes to smoke? The core material is hardly ground breaking given his genre, but his songs are doubly interesting because of his skin color and young age. Take that away and I suppose you are still left with some pretty good hooks, but is that all people want these days? Actually I suppose that is all anyone every really wants, a catchy chorus to sing along with. See Timbaland, Timberlake and Weezer for more on this.

Macklemore on the other hand, at least in his single "Thrift Shop," plays against hip hop stereotypes- choosing to rep bargain pricing over high style and brands. Where Miller plays to the frat boy crowds, Macklemore appeals more to the indy/hipster crowd with off-kilter pop culture references. His flow is decidedly more substantial than Miller's as well which really sells it, especially with excellent sampling backing it up.

It says something about this point in time in music when two quirky acts like this are selling out campuses across the U.S., even in regions as vanilla as this area can be. That something probably has to do with internet presence and the new label structure which benefits acts that are hard to categorize, but do well once people are exposed to it. Although a simpler answer is probably that college kids like to smoke and drink and have get down to some beats. Probably best to go with that before I get sucked into an afternoon searching and watching Millers videos and Google searching objects to see if I could afford them and be white boy awesome too.

In any case, I would be curious how aware the university is of Mac's propensity to smoke a little. For a campus that has twisted itself into knots about "liberal" types coming to speak to students who are or so impressionable, this is certainly not a family act.