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 certifi ca-
tion, and Macklemore’s promo duties for
the album are kicking into gear: Tonight, he
and Lewis will fl y to Phoenix, where they’re
launching a 25-city tour. Before the fl ight,
though, Macklemore has some errands to
run, a last-minute rehearsal to pop in on,
and most important – because he is an al-
coholic and a drug addict – a recovery meet-
ing to attend. When he gets there, he’ll take
a seat in a beat-up chair, fi dget anxiously
with the drawstring of his hoodie, and lis-
ten 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 alco-
hol in seven years – he has relapsed, sever-
al times, with several dif erent drugs, since
The Heist transformed him from an under-
ground MC with regional buzz to a world-
famous pop star. He’ll talk about how he
lied about these relapses to his wife, Tri-
cia 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 prioritise my recovery, it’s
only so long till I’m miserable or I’m loaded,”
he’ll tell me afterward. “The drug I take de-
pends 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.”
But that meeting’s not for a couple of
hours, and right now Macklemore needs
to buy an electric razor “and some deodor-
anttoo”,sohepointstheCadillactowarda
downtown Target. Some stars would del-
egatesuchchorestolackeys,butMackle-
more likes to feel he can still do mundane
stuf in public. At the Target, he faces a be-
wildering array of Brauns and Norelcos, and
awhite,fortyishemployeestockingshelves
noticeshisindecision.“Myhusbandhasthis
one, and he loves it,” she says. Macklemore
settlesonahigh-endmodelwitha$201.99
pricetagandafeaturecalledFlexMotion
Tec, at which point she adds, “Could I pos-
siblygetapicturewithyou?”Macklemore
assents. When he goes to pay, the cashier, a
dreadlockedblackguywithanametagthat
readschristopher, tells him, “You prob-
ably get this a lot, but you look exactly like
Macklemore–Iknowyou’renothim,soI’m
sorry,butIhadtosayitanyway.”
“It’sOK,”repliesMacklemore,seemingly
thrown – after all, he has the most recogni-
sable mug in town that doesn’t belong to a
Seahawk. “I do get that a lot.”
Back in the Cadillac, several sidewalk
fan-selfies later, Macklemore exhales:
“That was intense. I think I took as many
pictures just now as I have in the last year.”
He adds, “It’s cool. I don’t go to Target
every day, but at the same time, I don’t
want to not be able to go to Target. And if
I started tripping about people wanting to
take photos with me” – he pauses, decid-
ing how to word this – “then I would not
be very spiritually on-point.”
Spiritual on-pointness matters a lot to
Macklemore, from his sobriety struggles to
his music. Although he broke big with two
party songs – “Thrift Shop” and the stomp-
ing “Can’t Hold Us” – they both contained
inspirational motifs about rejecting confor-
mity and projecting self-confi dence; a sub-
sequent Heist hit, “Same Love”, champi-
oned marriage equality. Since the very start
of Macklemore’s career – back when he was
a high school backpack-rapper spitting pre-
posterously principled verses and dense ab-
stractions in a multiethnic crew called Ele-
vated Elements – what has united his music
is its smouldering earnestness and abiding
sense of conscience.
That’s as true on Unruly Mess as ever.
On the opening track, Macklemore de-
scribes the entertainment industry as an
insecurity-fuelled, congratulations-hun-
gry farce; on “Kevin”, inspired by the pre-
scription-drug overdose of a friend, he de-
cries Big Pharma as a gang of murderous
profi teers protected by a hypocritical jus-
tice system. Most ambitiously – and trick-
ily – he devotes nine minutes to a songcalled “White Privilege II”, which raises a
swarm of questions about our racist society
and Mackle more’s own ongoing complicity,
as a white rapper, within it. None of these
tracks refl ect what you’d call traditional-
ly commercial impulses, and while Mack-
lemore denies that the massive success of
The Heist prompted a conscious swerve
away from pop accessibility, the duo’s man-
ager, Zach Quillen, acknowledges that a
song like “White Privilege II” might alien-
ate “Thrift Shop” fans. “It might give some
of our audience whiplash,” he says. “On
one hand, we had greater success with The
Heist than we ever could have predicted,
and so we have some capital to spend. On
the other hand, it’s insanely risky.”
Driving southeast, Macklemore wants
to grab a bite. “Do you like pho?” he asks.
He parks outside a Vietnamese restaurant
called Pho Bac, then pops into a nearby
jewellery shop to say hello to the owner.
“What’s up, Lang?” Macklemore calls out.
Lang, a stocky guy sitting behind glitter-
ing display cases, replies, “Hey! Mack!”
and grins big as he rises for a handshake.
Macklemore went to high school minutes
from here, and it’s important to him to feel
as though he’s still enmeshed in the fab-
ric of city life, especially as it exists out-
side of al uent enclaves. The employees at
Pho Bac greet him fondly, as does a fi ftyish
black woman who asks him to autograph
two one-dollar bills and a 10 for her kids.
Our pho has barely arrived when Mack-
lemore checks his watch and realises the
recovery meeting has started. “Damn, I
keep showing up late,” he says, pulling on
his coat. Bowls unfi nished, we settle the
cheque and have just closed the Cadillac’s
doors when a middle-aged Hispanic guy
knocks hard on the passenger-side window.
“Mydaughterisactuallyabigfan,”hesays.
“CanItakeapicture?”M
acklemore asks
me not to specify
which recovery pro-
gram he uses, add-
ing, “I’m not bring-
ing you because I
want to ‘show the
writer’. I want to be transparent: This is
just what I’m doing today.” His relation-
ship to drugs began in his teens and has
never unfolded in moderation. “When I do
drugs, the only thing I think about is how
I’m going to get more drugs,” he says. In
adolescence, “high on weed or drunk of
malt liquor”, he’d act out in ways large and
small: stealing cash from his job at Bur-
ger King, “smashing car windows to steal
change to buy 40s, doing gra ti, riding
in cars my friends stole. I’ve always been
drawn to the grimy shit.”
This wasn’t remotely a function of eco-
nomic need – Haggerty grew up well-of- but rather “a rite of passage, hormonal
78 |Rolling Stone|RollingStoneAus.com May, 2016
“From the
moment that
I woke up to
the moment
that I went
to bed, I just
cared about
getting
drugs.”
Contributing editor Jonah Weiner
wrote about Joanna Newsom in RS 769. PREVIOUS PAGE: PRODUCED BY COCO KNUDSON. GROOMING BY VAUGHN AT MIZU. STYL
ING BY SOPHIE PERAAT SEE MANAGEMENT. LEATHER JACKET BY VINTAGE FROM WHAT GOES AROUND COMES AROUNDMacklemore’s
Guilt Trip