Why Macklemore Risked It All for ‘White Privilege II’
Macklemore sends a text at a quarter to noon: “Pulling up in 1 min. I’m in a crimson Hummer.”
The Hummer part’s a joke, it turns out, but right on time, the Seattle hip-hop star arrives in something no less eye-popping: a black 2008 Cadillac DTS Biarritz with tinted windows, a cream-color vinyl top, whitewall tires and rows of tiny cactuses painted along its rear flanks. Macklemore – 32, Seattle-born and the hugest white rapper since Eminem – became a Cadillac obsessive as a kid, mainlining California gangsta rap through his Walkman; he bought the DTS a few years ago “with my first real rap money,” he says. He’s got an arm draped over the steering wheel and an 18-karat-gold, diamond-faced Rolex President on his wrist.
Puncturing the aura of ostentation is the molded plastic car seat mounted behind him: property of Macklemore’s nine-month-old daughter, Sloane. Also puncturing it is the car’s smashed grille: “I fucked it up yesterday,” he says. “I was driving, on my phone, looking at World Star” – a video-sharing site devoted to hip-hop culture – “and I was thinking, ‘This is a really stupid thing to be doing.’ And right at that moment, I rear-ended a truck.”
He grimaces, shaking his head, and we pull out. It’s a January day in Seattle, and Macklemore, born Ben Haggerty, has bigger things to worry about. He’s getting ready to put out This Unruly Mess I’ve Made, his sixth release and second album with creative partner and musical architect Ryan Lewis. Their debut LP was 2012’s smash The Heist, which went platinum and controversially beat out Kendrick Lamar, Drake, Jay Z and Kanye West for the Best Rap Album Grammy. It featured, among other hits, the inescapable “Thrift Shop” – an ode to swagger rummaging through Goodwill bins that spent six weeks at Number One, and which has earned an astonishing 863 million views and counting on YouTube.
Unruly Mess‘ lead single, “Downtown” – a B-boy operetta of old-school rap and Freddie Mercury-indebted theatricalism – is well on its way to platinum certification, and Macklemore’s promo duties for the album are kicking into gear: Tonight, he and Lewis will fly to Phoenix, where they’re launching a 25-city tour. Before the flight, though, Macklemore has some errands to run, a last-minute rehearsal to pop in on, and most important – because he is an alcoholic and a drug addict – a recovery meeting to attend. When he gets there, he’ll take a seat in a beat-up chair, fidget anxiously with the drawstring of his hoodie, and listen to the stories of men and women he’s come to know intimately. He will thank them for sharing, then talk about how – even though he hasn’t had a drop of alcohol in seven years – he has relapsed, several times, with several different drugs, since The Heist transformed him from an underground MC with regional buzz to a world-famous pop star. He’ll talk about how he lied about these relapses to his wife, Tricia Davis, whom he married last year in his parents’ yard, a month after Sloane was born. And he’ll tell his fellow addicts that he’s frightened: Leaving town, he’s unsure how he’ll be able to stay clean without this group. “If I don’t prioritize my recovery, it’s only so long till I’m miserable or I’m loaded,” he’ll tell me afterward. “The drug I take depends on the relapse. It could be a pill. Lean. Weed. Something I snort. Something I eat. It doesn’t matter – if I put anything in my body, I want more.”