Straight up, driving all around here, like I was 15 years ago. “I’m in meetings with management with sunglasses on and I’m rolling around like a 15-year-old trying not to get caught smoking weed in my car. But after this bag of weed…” He became “sneaky” and “deceitful,” to those closest to him. OK, fuck it, I might as well go on to the weekend. Like any accomplished addict, Ben bargained with himself throughout summer 2014, struggling to quit: “You know, like, Monday, I’ma stop…. “Ben, genuinely, in his best form, uses music as his means to process his day-to-day life.” The lack of productivity made Ryan question: “Do you want to make this album? Because it doesn’t feel like you want to be here.” “Since I was a teenager and came across his name for the first time, there’s always been this sense of just trying to make honest music-trying to get the centerpiece of what he knows, what he thinks, how he feels,” says Ryan. Eventually, “I sat in a car, a hot boxed car-I thought that was a good idea-and got high,” he says, “And then the next day it was like, What’s up with the weed? And once I’m there, it’s over.” There was no music being made during Ben’s relapse, which struck Ryan as odd. But when he got off the road and came back home, he found himself running through the motions: trying to fill himself by purchasing sneakers and jewelry and the other trappings of newfound fame and wealth. Tricia found some sleeping pills that he had hidden in his shoe at SXSW, so he sobered up for a bit. At first, he hid his backsliding-“everyone knew, but they didn’t necessarily know,” he says. All the clichés, man-like not being able to walk around, having no privacy, and from this TV appearance to this TV appearance, and the criticism, and the lack of connection, and the lack of meetings-all of that put into one pie was just…I just wanted to escape.” In terms of the media I was getting put into a box that I never saw for myself. We weren’t sleeping-doing a show every day, zigzagging all over the country. “But, eventually, I stopped going to my 12-step meetings.” “I held it together for a while,” he says. 2 on Billboard’s album chart, the two number-one hits in “Thrift Shop” and “Can’t Hold Us,” the four Grammy wins, and the true people’s choice award as the most streamed artist on Spotify in 2013-Ben relapsed into taking pills and smoking marijuana. And after the success of Macklemore & Ryan Lewis’ The Heist-the debut at No. This is the neighborhood he grew up in one of his old high schools, Garfield, is right down the road. And that’s a version of myself that I don’t feel that far removed from.” I feel like I’m the 15-year-old kid down the street, trying to escape, get out of class, smoke weed in the street, and kick it. “I have to keep myself on point and be the best version of myself for this child to be the best version of itself,” he says. Which he’s done everyday since last September, when he discovered Tricia was with child and started working with Ryan Lewis on their new, still untitled follow-up to 2012’s history-making The Heist. But, moreover, the restaurant is located down the block and around the corner from the location where Ben attends 12-step meetings. One is that the interview was set to take place at Ben’s house, which is seven minutes away, but Tricia Davis-Ben’s pregnant finacée and an integral part of his business life-is eight or nine days overdue and was not informed that there would be any guests until the night before.
Earl-a tooth-impaired, middle-aged brother who’s seen better days-chats him up and sits down, until Ben informs Earl that there’s an interview about to take place.
The patrons acknowledge him with a warm familiarity one of the waitresses teases that her daughter recently saw him on TV rapping about garbage with Oscar the Grouch on Sesame Street. As he walks into the small, low-key Ethiopian restaurant in Seattle’s Central District, it becomes clear that everyone here respects his privacy and his celebrity as the professional rapper Macklemore in equal measure. When Ben Haggerty approaches, he seems sheepish and awkward, if not tentative and searching.
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