hella gay uncles
Summary
While reading up on Macklemore’s song “Same Love”, I came across an article on the Huffington Post which says that Macklemore’s “four ‘hella gay’ uncles were an influence”: I thought that was a little weird, but didn’t think too deeply about it… until I saw the full quote. Here’s a transcript of the relevant dialog (from his interview with Angie Martinez in NYC): Macklemore: Well, on my dad’s side out of like his four brothers two of those brothers are gay. And then they have their respective partners, and I consider those my uncles as well, so that makes four gay uncles…. However, the context makes it clear that Macklemore is using “hella” in its capacity as a quantifier. Whoever wrote the article on HuffPo was either confused or not familiar with the noun-quantifier sense of the word “hella”.