When writing the song, which features a soulful hook from Ed Sheeran, Haggerty didn’t yet know the gender of his future child, so the first verse is written to a girl, while the second is penned to a boy. How am I supposed to raise another human being when I haven’t fully grown up myself? How can I bring another life into this world when I’m not a finished product?” I was scared and I was anxious and I was fearful that I wasn’t prepared to be a father yet. “Ryan pushed me to get a little bit deeper with what I was writing and to touch on what I was feeling in that moment. “I think my wife Tricia was about six or seven months pregnant, and we had the idea of a song about giving advice to your unborn child,” remembers Macklemore. The first song released from those wilderness writing sessions, “Growing Up (Sloane’s Song),” tackles Haggerty’s biggest life change yet, fatherhood. It was the most prolific month-and-a-half ever.” “We basically packed up the studio, took it to a small cabin, and had a concise month-and-a-half of making music with no distractions. “We went out to the woods,” says Macklemore, whose real name is Ben Haggerty. The tracks on ‘The Heist’ have collectively been streamed nearly a billion times on Spotify (with YouTube views far exceeding that), and the duo has performed on nearly every late-night show, as well as Ellen, Good Morning America, and SNL. The album earned them four GRAMMY awards at that ceremony, including Best New Artist and Rap Album of the Year. ‘The Heist,’ recorded and released independently without a traditional record label, debuted at #2 on the Billboard 200 and went platinum on the strength of mega-hits like “Thrift Shop,” which spent six weeks at #1 on the Billboard Hot 100 “Can’t Hold Us,” the Hot 100’s longest-running consecutive #1 of 2013 and the most-streamed song of the year on Spotify and “Same Love,” their moving anthem for marriage equality, which they performed with Madonna at the GRAMMYs. I didn’t want to get locked into everything that comes with knowing that there’s an audience waiting for a new album.” I wanted to make sure I was still having fun making music, that I was making art that I was proud of and that felt innovative and interesting. “Coming out of such a tremendously exhausting time period and feeling like we’d exceeded every goal we were going for, I needed to try to make sure I had a handle on life. “After going through two-and-a-half years of what ‘The Heist’ was, you’re in a totally different place walking into the second album,” adds Lewis.
I can’t wait to see what the rest of the album has to offer, whenever it comes out.“It was important for me and Ryan to step back and live a little bit of life, to have some experiences that could broaden our perspectives,” says Macklemore, who along with producer Ryan Lewis took the world by storm with their record-shattering 2012 debut ‘The Heist.’ “We came back from tour and just needed some time to be human again.” As soon as it finishes I want to start it over again. Filmed in Spokane, “Downtown” gets me moving in my seat. It blends old school hip hop (yes that’s Kool Moe Dee, Melle Mel and Grandmaster Caz you see there), over-the-top orchestration (a la Queen, or more recently, fun.), a touch of Seattle (Hi Junior!) and a little West Side Story. But the production, that chorus, the prog-rock way the song bounces from one stanza to the next (is this a new genre of music, Prog Hip Hop?) - I love it. There’s a lot I don’t care for in “Downtown.” Macklemore is definitely pushing the envelope of his good-boy image with some of the lyrics within (nobody needs to hear about his or anybody’s scrotum, for instance). (Macklemore and his wife had a baby girl, Sloane, back in May, after “Growing Up” was written and recorded.)Īnd now here’s sure to be the first hit from their new as-yet-unnamed new album. On August 5th they released their first new recording since that album, “ Growing Up,” which is one of their more touchy-feely songs, all about Macklemore’s soon-to-be-born child. It’s been three years since M&RL released their platinum-selling, independently released, mega-hit album The Heist. I’ve now listened to the song above, “Downtown,” twice, and already that chorus (sung by Foxy Shazam’s Eric Nally) is on constant repeat in my head.
#Downtown and growing up macklemore how to#
But there’s no denying that he and Ryan Lewis know how to create a hit song.
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