Macklemore reached number one without a record label
In 2012 a Seattle rapper and his producer friend put out a jokey song about bargain-hunting in secondhand shops. Thrift Shop climbed to the top of the Billboard Hot 100, the first self-released track to get there in 11 years. Then their next single did the same, something no duo had managed before.
Macklemore is the stage name of Ben Haggerty, born in Seattle in 1983 and raised in the Capitol Hill neighbourhood. Hip-hop reached him at six through Digital Underground, and he was writing lyrics by fifteen, soaking up East Coast underground rap and groups like Wu-Tang Clan. The name came from a high school art project about an invented superhero, Professor Macklemore. A year at college in Santa Fe was, he said, where he really learned to rap.
For most of a decade he was a local act. He handed out his first mixtape himself in 2000, dropped the Professor from his name and released his first full album in 2005. Along the way he earned a degree from Evergreen State College, where he ran music workshops for young people in detention. He met Ryan Lewis in 2006, when Lewis was working as his photographer, and the two made their partnership official in 2009.
Their success came on their own terms. Rather than sign a conventional deal, they used a short one-album arrangement with a Warner-owned independent distributor that let them keep control of their work. The Heist entered the Billboard 200 at number 2 in October 2012, and at the Grammys the pair won four awards, including Best New Artist and Best Rap Album, with Same Love taking Best Rap Song. Can't Hold Us, featuring Ray Dalton, became their second chart-topper.
He has been open about past substance abuse, drawing on it in songs such as Otherside and Drug Dealer, which appeared in a documentary alongside a conversation with Barack Obama. After a second duo album the pair went on hiatus in 2017, and his solo record Gemini also peaked at number 2. His 2023 album, simply titled Ben, reached number 18.
Source: Macklemore
