Macklemore & Ryan Lewis have been quiet for some time now. Ever since their 2012 album, The Heist, become a worldwide sensation, spawning massive hits like "Thrift Shop," "Same Love" and "Can't Hold Us" (which opened up doors to endorsement deals, media opportunities and worldwide festival and arena gigs over the next two years), the pair has gone almost completely silent. It is the fickle nature of the modern music business that artists need to keep making headlines in order to stay relevant. Now, the pair is returning by recording a new album, which should be out by the end of the year. Speaking to Complex this month about the process of making the LP, Ben Haggerty also opens up about his struggle with addiction in 2014 as fame started to overwhelm him.
In the story, it is confirmed that the new album will be released in the fourth quarter of 2015. The pair is about 75 percent completed with the album but the final quarter is the most difficult part of the process.
"I would say there's better cohesiveness than the last album," says Ryan. "But, like anything we've done, it has a variety to it. With this album, you have these different songs that are reaching in terms of emotion and tone and message and where they sit. None of them are competing with each other for the same spot, but they're reaching in really different directions. So you have these really different things and you have no idea which one might resonate with people more than another one."
However, the most illuminating part of the piece is Haggerty describing his relapse back into addiction and how he was eventually able to pull himself out of it because his wife, Tricia, became pregnant.
He started smoking weed and taking pills last year as a way to try and cope with their new found fame.
"I was super-stressed," he described. "We weren't sleeping-doing a show every day, zigzagging all over the country. In terms of the media I was getting put into a box that I never saw for myself. The pressure and the fame-everything...I just wanted to escape."
Read the full story and Interview at Complex.
