Illustration by Lusco y Fusco
Whether it’s showing his support for same-sex marriage or talking candidly about his addiction, Macklemore is one of the most genuine rappers making hip-hop today.
He’s the first white rapper to be taken seriously by the hip-hop community since Eminem. Seattle’s four-time Grammy Award-winning Macklemore is enjoying a career as high as the moon — which is how high he himself used to be.
Macklemore’s 2012 album with Ryan Lewis, The Heist, is chock full of references to his drinking days and the demons he fought while trying to get sober.
On The Heist and the single “The Otherside” that preceded it, Macklemore sliced his guts wide open and rapped about his feelings as they relate to his addiction. Because of the storytelling nature of hip-hop, Macklemore talks more eloquently and openheartedly than a rocker ever could:
Broken, hopeless, headed nowhere
Only motivation for what the dealer’s supplying
Those pills, that crumb, that roach
Thinkin’ I would never do that, not that drug
And growing up nobody ever does
Until you’re stuck, looking’ in the mirror
Like I can’t believe what I’ve become
Swore I was gonna be someone
And Growing up everyone always does
We sell our dreams and our potential
To escape through that buzz
Just keep me up, keep me up
Hollywood, here we come
— “The Otherside”
Addicted to alcohol and Oxycontin, Macklemore started drinking at an early age.
“[When] I actually drank for the first time, I was by myself,” he told MTV News. “This is an indicator of who I was, from the jump. After school, by myself [at] 13 years old, maybe 14.”
He had raided his parents’ liquor cabinet and took 12 shots while listening to 2-Pac. “That’s not people like, ’yo keep going.’ That’s me, by myself, dolo in the kitchen, like I can’t stop,” he told MTV. “I can’t turn this off. This feels good, I wanna keep going.”
Macklemore started rapping at age 13, and it was freshman year of high school when he realized that rapping and getting high did not go hand in hand.
“I’d go a month and be sober, make a bunch of music and then fall back off and vanish for a couple months and go back and forth like that,” Macklemore told MTV. “That’s how I made music for the majority of my teen years and twenties.”
Then came a realization.
“I’d always thought that if I could get sober and stay sober, I would be able to have a career making music,” Macklemore told Interview magazine. “My drug and alcohol addiction was the one thing holding me back. I had finally gotten the tools to stay sober, and it was just a matter of writing the songs. There was no choice but to go all-in.”’
In August of 2008, at age 25, Macklemore admitted himself into rehab at his father’s urging.
“If it wasn’t for that rehab center, I probably wouldn’t have been here,” he told MTV. “In terms of recovery, it has been very important for me to be a part of a recovery community, to actively be around my people because they understand me. They get it.”
Now 32, Macklemore regularly attends AA meetings. He was sober for three years post-rehab in 2008. He relapsed three years later.
It is the heartfelt “Starting Over” that documents Macklemore’s relapse and his humble plea for forgiveness:
Those three plus years, I was so proud of
And I threw ’em all away for two Styrofoam cups
The irony, everyone will think that he lied to me
Made my sobriety so public, there’s no fuckin’ privacy
If I don’t talk about it then I carry a date
08-10-08, but now it’s been change
And everyone put me in some box as a saint that I never was,
It’s the false prophet that never came
And will they think that everything I’ve written has all been fake
Or will I just take my slip to the grave?
Uh, what the fuck are my parents gonna say?
The success story that got his life together and changed
When you tell your dad you relapsed then look him directly into his face
…
If I can be an example of getting sober
Then I can be an example of starting over
— “Starting Over”
Macklemore has been sober since that brief relapse. And it’s paid off. He and Ryan Lewis won four Grammys last year – for Best Rap Album (The Heist), Best New Artist, Best Rap Song, and Best Rap Performance (“Thrift Shop”).
Macklemore plays three festivals coming up: Lollapalooza Berlin, and two dates at the Summer Sonic festival in Japan.
If you haven’t seen it, you must watch Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ pro-same-sex marriage video for “Same Love “— a video that came out long before the Supreme Court’s decision allowing gay marriage nationwide.
And here’s a live clip of “Starting Over.”
