Macklemore

Macklemore supports LGBT rights and same-sex marriage, and he expressed it through the song ‘Same Love’.

In August 2008, he was admitted to a rehab program for drug addiction and alcoholism. After three years of sobriety, a brief relapse took place in 2011, which he described in his song ‘Starting Over’.

On January 21, 2013, he got engaged to his girlfriend Tricia Davis, whom he had been dating from the past seven years.

Macklemore was born as Benjamin Hammond Haggerty on June 19, 1983, in Kent, Washington, to Bill Haggerty and Julie Schott. He was raised with his brother Tim in Seattle.

When he was six, he heard the group Digital Underground’s music on radio, and that’s how hip hop first came into his life. He listened to a lot of East Coast underground hip hop. He started writing lyrics as a teenager.

As he wanted to reach the younger generation through his music, he joined a program called Gateways for Incarcerated Youth, where he organized music workshops.

He attended Nathan Hale High School and eventually earned a bachelor's degree from the Evergreen State College in 2009.

In 2000, he debuted as Professor Macklemore with the ‘Open Your Eyes’ EP, which he distributed himself. Five years later, in January 2005, he released his debut album, ‘The Language of My World’, which earned him a huge local following.

He performed at Bumbershoot, a popular arts and music festival in Seattle in 2008, 2009 and 2011. In 2009, he launched ‘The Unplanned Mixtape’, which reached No. 7 position on the iTunes Hip Hop chart. His debut single ‘The Town’, from ‘The Unplanned Mixtape’, was later remixed by Sabzi of the Blue Scholars.

Macklemore and his friend Ryan Lewis officially started collaborating in 2009 as a duo “Macklemore & Ryan Lewis” and released an EP ‘The Vs. EP.’ In December 2009, they released the single ‘Irish Celebration’.

In 2010, the duo created two songs—in March, they launched ‘Stay At Home Dad’, and in October, they created the ‘VS. Redux EP,’ that yielded the hit ‘Otherside’, which samples the Red Hot Chili Peppers song of the same name. On April 8, 2011, the duo performed the song at the 2011 Mariners Opening Day in front of a crowd of about 48,000 attendees.

On January 21, 2011, ‘Wings’ was released, followed by ‘Can't Hold Us’ on August 16, which was viral on social media. In the same year, the duo performed at three sold-out shows at Showbox at the Market, a music venue in Seattle.

The debut studio album by Macklemore and Ryan Lewis, ‘The Heist,’ is undoubtedly one of their best known works. The album debuted at number 2 on the Billboard 200 and featured the super-hit single ‘Thrift Shop,’ which peaked at number one on the Billboard Hot 100 and was also the number one in 17 other countries. The album was a huge commercial and critical success as well.