Magazine

OTHERSIDE o therside MAC MILLER’S LONG ROAD TO

FIND HIMSELF

A$AP ROCKY TAKES FLIGHT

HOW TO

DRAKE

IT IN AMERICA

MACKLEMORE & RYAN LEWIS

Otherside is devoted to the side of the music industry that is over-looked. It connects you with artists’ and their music in a way you might have not understood before.

November/December 2013

Rapper J. Cole thinks there is more to life than hip-hop. Page 19

FEATURES 34 A$AP Rocky’s Fast,

Steep Flight To The Top

40 393 Million Macklemore Fans Can’t Be Wrong

46 How To Drake It In America

50 Mac Miller:

Find Yourself

59 Eminem Gives His

Support to Macklemore and Ryan Lewis

DEPARTMENTS 15 Top 10 Hip-Hop Songs

Miley Cyrus: Confessions of Pop's Wildest Child. Page 46

of 2013

54 Artits’ Tattoos and What They Really Mean

Sean “Diddy” Combs is still hip-hop's wealthiest mogul. Page 22

ON THE COVER: Macklemore (Ben Haggerty) and Ryan Lewis photographed in Seattle on September 25th, 2013, by Peter Yang.

Styling by Hilary Folks at the Drouin Agency. Grooming by Renee Majour for Celestine Agency.

November 28, 2013

otherside.com | OTHERSIDE | 5

EDITOR IN CHIEF: Chris Johns DEPUTY EDITOR: Victoria Pope CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Bill Marr MANAGING EDITOR: David Brindley STORY DEVELOPMENT EDITOR: Barbara Paulsen ARTICLES EDITOR: Oliver Payne EDITOR AT LARGE: Cathy Newman FEATURES EDITOR: Glenn Oeland CONTRIBUTING WRITERS: Caroline Alexander, Don Belt, Joel K. Bourne, Jr., Chip Brown, Bryan Christy, Robert Draper, Cynthia Gorney, Peter Hessler, Jennifer S. Holland, Mark Jenkins, Peter Miller, David Quammen DEPARTMENTS DIRECTOR: Margaret G. Zackowitz

Photography

EDITOR AT LARGE: Michael Nichols SENIOR PHOTO EDITORS: Pamela Chen, Alice Gabriner, Kim Hubbard, Todd James, Elizabeth Krist, Sadie Quarrier PHOTO EDITOR: Jeanne M. Modderman, Mary McPeak STAFF PHOTOGRAPHER: Mark Thiessen DIGITAL IMAGING: Edward Samuel, Evan Wilder

Design/Art

DEPUTY CREATIVE DIRECTOR: Kaitlin M. Yarnall DESIGN DIRECTOR: David C. Whitmore, Juan Velasco SENIOR DESIGN EDITORS: John Baxter, Elaine H. Bradley GRAPHIC DESIGN SPECIALISTS: Kevin DiCesare, Sandi Owatverot-Nuzzo, Daniela Santamarina, Maggie Smith, Matthew Twombly ADMINISTRATION: Cinde Reichard, Trish Dorsey, Michael Kritikos

Copy/Research

RESEARCH DIRECTOR: Alice S. Jones SENIOR COPY EDITOR: Mary Beth Oelkers-Keegan COPY EDITORS: Kitry Krause, Cindy Leitner RESEARCH EDITORS: Heidi Schultz, Elizabeth Snodgrass, Christy Ullrich Barcus, Nora Gallagher, David A. Lande, Taryn L. Salinas, Brad Scriber PRODUCTION: Sandra Dane

E-Publishing

DIGITAL EDITIONS DIRECTOR: Lisa Lytton, Jody Sugrue VIDEO DIRECTOR: Hans Weise SENIOR WEB PRODUCER: John Kondis ASSOCIATE WEB PRODUCER: Web Barr

Administration

Karen Dufort Sligh (Asst. to the Editor in Chief), Carol L. Dumont (Scheduling), Julie Rushing (Finance), Valerie CribbChapman, Nikisha Long, Laura Flanagan COMMUNICATIONS VICE PRESIDENTS: Beth Foster, Mary Jeanne Jacobsen, Barbara S. Moffet PUBLISHING SYSTEMS VICE PRESIDENT: Dave E. Smith DIGITAL OPERATIONS DIRECTOR: Russ Little, Melissa Wiley SENIOR PROJECT MANAGER: Gina L. Cicotello SYSTEMS ADMINISTRATORS: Patrick Twomey, Robert Giroux, Casey Jensen

Advertising

NATIONAL ADVERTISING DIRECTOR: Robert Amberg VICE PRESIDENT MARKETING: Jenifer Berman VICE PRESIDENT BUSINESS AND OPERATIONS: Margaret Schmidt

Justin Timberlake - The 20/20 Experience | The 20/20 Experience Part 2 6 | OTHERSIDE | otherside.com

Otherside (ISSN 1947-4377) Volume 5, Issue 7 is published bimonthly by AFAR Media, LLC 130 Battery Street, Sixth Floor, San Francisco, CA 94111, U.S.A. In the US Your Magazine Name is a registered trademark of AFAR Media, LLC. Publisher assumes no responsibility for the return of unsolicited manuscripts, art, or any other unsolicited materials. Subscription price for U.S. residents: $25.00 for 7 issues. Canadian subscription rate: $35.00 (GAT included) for 7 issues. All other countries $40.00 for 7 issues. To order a subscription to Your Magazine name or to inquire about an existing subscription, please write to Your Magazine Name Customer Service, P. O. Box 6265, Harlan IA 51591-1765, or call (888) 403-9001. Periodicals postage paid at SanFrancisco, CA, and at additional mailing offices. POSTMASTER: Please send address changes to Your Magazine Name, P. O. Box 6265, Harlan, IA51591-1765.

November 28, 2013

TOP 10 HIP-HOP SONGS

OF 2013

1 2

The Monster

Eminem Feat. Rihanna

Hold On, We’re Going Home Drake Feat. Majid Jordan

3 4

23

Make WiLL Made-It Feat. Miley Cyrus, Wiz Khalifa & Juicy J

Holy Grail

Jay Z Feat. Justin Timberlake

5

Blurred Lines

Robin Thicke Feat. T.I. and Pharrell

6

White Walls

Macklemore & Ryan Lewis Feat. Schoolboy Q & Hollis

7

My Hitta

YG Feat. Jeezy & Rich Homie Quan

8 Love More

Chris Brown Feat. Nicki Minaj

9 TKO

Justin Timberlake

10 It Won’t Stop

Sevyn Streeter Feat. Chris Brown

Photograph By: Kevin Mazur

15 | OTHERSIDE | otherside.com

Ben Haggerty, a.k.a. Macklemore (right), with producer Ryan Lewis (left) in Seattle Photograph by Peter Yang

393 MILLION

MACKLEMORE (AND RYAN LEWIS) FANS CAN’T BE WRONG How a slightly guilty Seattle rapper and his cocky young producer took over the music industry

BY BRIAN HIATT

OTHERSIDE | 41

H

Amsterdam coffee shop of playing e called it a “coke a bad guy in a Die Hard sequel. with grenadine,” but His shorn-on-the-sides haircut and there’s no way around distinctive facial features - broad it: Ben “Macklemore” nose, protuberant lower lip whose Haggerty, grown-ass resting position is something like a man with a fiancée and incipient sneer - are exaggeratedly severe, wrinkles around his gray-blue perfectly primed to pop out of the eyes, just ordered himself a Shirley YouTube windows and cellphone Temple. OK, technically, to be fair, a screens that are the visual home of Roy Rogers. You feel like a six-year the modern pop star. old if you order a Roy Rogers,” he Haggerty raises his reddishsays, sitting in a green leather booth black beverage in a toast. He has a in a downtown restaurant by the lot to celebrate lately, although he waterfront in his native Seattle, where seems more weary than exuberant. the chef began preparing him an Most of all, there's a fact that he off-menu fried chicken sandwich and his musical partner, producer the moment he arrived. “Dropping Ryan Lewis, have now sold nearly a the 'grenadine' makes it sound much million copies of their debut album, more sophisticated. But it's just sugar The Heist - and have managed to on top of sugar.” move beyond “Thrift Shop,” a hit As a self-proclaimed “nice-guy so enormous it threatened to make rapper,” a recovering alcoholic and him a North American Psy: Its clever drug addict whose lyrics preach video has been viewed more than 390 against the evils of homophobia, million times. Haggerty really feared sexism and $50 T-shirts, Haggerty spending the rest of his life as ‘the hasn't left himself much room for Thrift Shop’ guy,” and the fact that he vices. He's traded cigarettes for and Lewis had managed to get there occasional e-cigs, and won't even on their own, without a major label, spring for the fancy ones. He barely was little consolation. drinks coffee. “Sugar is definitely A few months ago, Haggerty was the go-to,” he says. “Every once in a bristling at his outsized pop success, while I'll just go to a gas station and which he feared could trivialize him spend $20 on, like, an assortment forever. Even his sobriety felt at risk. of candy and binge-eat it in a hotel “It was definitely a challenge at the room.” Tucked next to the gearshift beginning of the year,” he says. “I in his tinted-window Cadillac DTS, went through a place of not being where another rapper might have happy, getting put into the box of stashed a bag of weed, is an open ‘This is a novelty rap song,’ and being packet of Nerds. At this rate, future like, ‘What did I sign up for?’” His Macklemore lyrics may well have to concerns were remarkably similar address the perils of diabetes, but to those of the Seattle rock heroes of thanks to the intense cardio of the two decades ago, but the comparison 200-plus shows he'll play by the end is lost on him - when Nirvana of the year, his dietary deficiencies Unplugged came out, he was busy have yet to take their toll. At 30, listening to Wu-Tang Clan.

Haggerty is wiry enough to make The driving “Can't Hold Us” was today's dressed-down look work: a surprise Number One after “Thrift crispy purple T-shirt, striped warm-up Shop,” but the success of “Same pants, white Jordans - which, despite Love,” Haggerty's moving and his Nike-focused anti-materialism unambiguous pro-gay marriage song “Wings,” he as yet to give up. song - the first hip-hop hit to go all the “Am I being a hypocrite? Absolutely,” way there - meant much more. The he says, “But that's OK. I'm a fucking track was inspired, in part, by the human being and I don't need to fact that he has “hella gay uncles” be perfect. I can make a song like two of his dad's brothers, plus their ‘Wings’ and wear Nikes.” partners. “‘Same Love’ was just a big He's of Irish descent, but looks relief,” he says. “It was, yes, the world indeterminately European, like he is going to know me for something should be manning the counter of an else, even if we never go on to make 42 | OTHERSIDE | otherside.com

another album or, you know, sell a good amount of units or whatever, the legacy that I'm leaving on the world is more than just a song about secondhand clothes.”

He's also grateful that his success happened now, when he's sober, rather than circa 2005, when he released his first album as a freshout-of-college kid with out-of-control bad habits. “It freaks me out to think what might have happened,” Haggerty says, casually, between bites of his sandwich. “You do the math. You're, like, a drug addict with no moderation and a shit ton of money? I would have died.”

On our way to his car, Haggerty stops by his favorite pawnshop, where the wares range from a Smallville box set to a selection of firearms. The big-bellied, straightfrom-central-casting owner tries to interest him in some oversize rings that Haggerty assumes were once worn by “big-ass drug dealers from the Eighties.”

Instead, he decides to buy something from a nearby Target - his car is parked in an adjoining garage, and a purchase will validate his parking, saving him eight bucks. “I'll never stop thinking like that,” he says. He takes all of three steps into the store before he's swarmed by teenage fans (and one shuddering fifty something lady who keeps saying that her daughter is going to “shit her pants”). He takes the obligatory pictures, and quickly extricates himself. “I would definitely pay $8 to get out of this,” he says, escaping into an elevator.

There are white people everywhere on this Seattle block

“FAME IS WEARING ON HIM IN PRIVATE,” SAYS RYAN LEWIS. “IN PUBLIC HE TRIES AS HARD AS HE CAN NOT TO BE AN ASSHOLE. NOBODY WANTS TO BE A KANYE, YOU KNOW?”

MACKLEMORE & RYAN LEWIS PERFORM AT SASQUATCH MUSIC FESTIVAL 2011

tonight, hella white people, at least a couple thousand of them, pressing against barricades and yellow police tape. There are more of them above, lined up on adjoining rooftops.

They are mostly college-age, and collectively smell like weed. They are here because of a totally unconfirmed - and, as it runs out, totally untrue rumor that Macklemore and Ryan Lewis will be playing a free show tonight on the roof of the Capitol Hill branch of local burger joint Dick's Drive-In. They walked blithely past signs that said THIS IS NOT A CONCERT and parked themselves in the street in front of Dick's, waiting for the show.

The duo are merely shooting a video for their next single, “White Walls,” a straight-ahead ode to Cadillacs, which means the crowd will endlessly hear the same verse of the song as Haggerty lip-syncs on the roof. Lewis - a confident, Hollywood-handsome 25-year-old who is incongruously stuck in behind-the-scenes roles like directing videos and producing music - struts up to the edge of the roof, grabs a microphone and tells the crowd that there will be a wait.

They don't budge.

As Lewis sets up shots, Haggerty paces in Dick's blocked-off parking lot, obviously perturbed by the fans' presence: What do they want from him? “You always wonder, like, ‘Is it going away? Is it dying down? Is it

over?’” he says later. “You see stuff like that, you're like, ‘Oh, yeah. It's definitely showing no signs of slowing down.’ There was no performance at all, so you wonder what people are expecting. And you have people yelling shit at you and you don't want to be a dick, but if you respond to all of it, then it just doesn't stop, and it's very overwhelming.”

Lewis doesn't envy the intensity of fans' attention on Haggerty. “It's wearing on him in private,” the producer says. “In public he tries as hard as he can to care for people and not be an asshole. Nobody wants to be a Kanye, you know?”

It's nearly 1 a.m. when they finish the shoot, and the crowd has dwindled. Haggerty takes the rooftop mic and bids the fans goodnight, telling them to respect the police and get home safely. The reaction is impressive: Pretty much as one, the crowd shrugs, gathers its things, and quietly leaves.

Though Macklemore and Lewis have finally begun to penetrate hip-hop radio, they continue to attract fans who didn't buy Yeezus or Kendrick Lamar's debut. Especially when “Thrift Shop” was first blowing up, they gained a reputation as “hip-hop for people who don't like hop-hop.” Since Haggerty has more or less never listened to anything but hip-hop, that phenomenon drives him nuts. “I hate that,” he says. “I hate it. I

mean ... what are you going to do, but it's just ignorance.”

Back in 2005, Haggerty wrote a song called “White Privilege” with lyrics that were so honest, wellreasoned and powerful that he practically argued himself out of existence. He acknowledged his upper-middle-class upbringing, and asked, “Am I just another white boy who as caught on to the trend?/When I take a step to the mic is hip-hop closer to the end?... The face of hiphop has changed a lot since Eminem/ And if he's taking away black artists' profits/I look just like him.”

“If you're going to be a white dude and do this shit, I think you have to take some level of accountability,” Haggerty says. “You have to acknowledge where the art came from, where it is today, how you're benefiting from it. At the very least, just bringing up those point sand acknowledging that, yes, I understand my privilege, I understand how it works for me in society, and how it works for me in 2013 with the success that The Heist has had.”

“We made a great album,” he continues, “but I do think we have benefited from being white and the media grabbing on to something.

A song like ‘Thrift Shop’ was safe enough for the kids. It was like, ‘This is music that my mom likes and that I can like as a teenager,’ and even otherside.com | OTHERSIDE | 43

though I'm cussing my ass off in the song, the fact that I'm a white guy, parents feel safe. They let their sixyear-olds listen to it. I mean it's just... it's different. And would that success have been the same if I would have been a black dude? I think the answer is no.”

Lewis played in rock bands as a teenager, and his role as the album's producer takes The Heist's music to what could be considered a whiter place. Piano and other live instruments are prominent, and beats tend to push forward instead of laying back into grooves. “I didn't grow up listening to hip-hop since I was six,” says Lewis. “Ben did. Seattle isn't known for a particular production sound, so that leaves a lot of great producers in Seattle doing kind of their own thing. And I think, for me, I was probably enough removed from hip-hop that my style was even a little bit weirder than that.”

Peter Rosenberg, an influential DJ at New York's Hot 97, says that might not be a bad thing, comparing Macklemore to another successful rapper. “Drake almost created his

Haggerty was a good kid, until he wasn't. His workaholic dad coowned a successful office-furniture company; his indulgent mom was a homemaker who also worked with non profits. As a pre-teen, he was creative and flamboyant, a born performer - as he recounts in “Same Love,” he briefly thought he might be gay, and not just because he spent a year obsessing over the musical Cats.

His parents played Van Morrison, jazz and Motown around the house, but Haggerty was honestly all about hip-hop from the start: Circa first grade, he was entranced by Digital Underground's “The Humpty Dance,” learning all of Shock G's ageinappropriate rhymes (“I once got busy in a Burger King bathroom!”)

Toward the end of eighth grade, Haggerty had his first drink, which turned out to be his first 12 drinks.

Sitting by himself in his room, he owned shot after shot, on a school night, no less. His freshman year at Garfield High School, a huge, diverse institution, didn't go well. “My mom still doesn't like to talk about it,” he says. “I turned into a dick for, like, 18

“I’M CUSSING MY ASS OFF, BUT BECAUSE I’M A WHITE GUY, PARENTS FEEL SAFE. WOULD SUCCESS HAVE BEEN THE SAME IF I WERE BLACK? THE ANSWER IS NO.” own genre,” he says. “You know, sound wise, Drake took a lot of stuff that had been out there and really created something new. But when you think about it, Macklemore has done the same thing with a completely different sound.”

44 | OTHERSIDE | otherside.com

months. Put 'em through hell, didn't respect 'em.”

On a sunny Saturday, he pays a visit to the school, but not before grabbing yet another fried-chicken meal at a place across the street.

Carrying a grease-laden bag, he

scales a couple dozen concrete steps and sits at the top, right by the school entrance. Somehow, a bunch of kids in a car far below spot him. “Are you Macklemore?” one shouts through an open window.

“His cousin,” he shouts back at them, which, for some reason, placates them.

Haggerty became instantly famous at Garfield for an achievement roughly as likely as becoming a multiplatinum rapper: As a freshman, he began dating a popular junior. “She was in court for truancy shit,” he recalls, squinting in the sun. “She wasn't the best influence on me. I had a bunch of older friends. A lot of kids I was kicking it with, like, dropped out of high school or were skipping class.

Doing drugs. Writing graffiti. Skating.”

His parents pulled him out of Garfield the next year, sending him to another school 15 minutes away.

His drinking continued, but he had also found his life's work, beginning to rap with four other kids in a group called Elevated Elements. They recorded in a vocal booth he had set up in his bedroom. Haggerty had been a fan of mainstream hip-hop: Wu-Tang, Nas, Tupac and Biggie (he still wears a Jesus piece around his neck, in tribute to Biggie rather than Christ). But he began gravitating towards the more introspective, conscious work of Talib Kweli and Freestyle Fellowship. In an interview with the student newspaper, he criticized hip-hop songs that “concentrate on negative things like who you have sex with and what kind of champagne you drink. We want to go beyond that to get our message of positivity across.”

The only substance that had a beneficial effect on Haggerty was psychedelic mushrooms. Around his junior year, he'd stay up all night tripping, listening to “weird Native American music” and scribbling out lyrics. “It gave me a spiritual context that completely shaped who I was as a teenager,” he says. “Up until that point, I had no connection with anything bigger than myself, and it gave me a faith in the universe. And that completely shaped the music that I was into, it shaped the way that

I went about writing music, it shaped my purpose in being a writer. And I loved it." Later, he would take up meditation, and even spent a few days in a Buddhist monastery during a youth-group trip to India.

He spent the summer of 2000 at a summer program at Pratt Institute in New York, where he drank so much that he didn't end up making much art. In a high school graphicarts class, he'd created a character named Professor Macklemore, and in New York, he took on that name.

“I would go to thrift shops and I would buy crazy outfits - plaid golfer outfits and fringe and go out and drink malt liquor, and when I was drunk in these outfits, I called myself Professor Macklemore. And I came out to Seattle and started going by it.

Eventually I had to put out music and couldn't think of a better rap name.”

Also in New York, a friend called him an alcoholic for the first time - he laughed it off.

After his time at the no-grades hippie school Evergreen State College, Haggerty's rap career blew up instantly. He'd hooked up with producer Josh “Budo” Karp, and the pair recorded a well-timed tracked called “Welcome to MySpace” in the spring of 2005. MySpace co-founder Tom Anderson featured it on the site's home page, and Macklemore had his first viral hit. The Eminem-like song which includes an uncharacteristic, politically incorrect warning about meeting girls through the site who turned out to be “six two and looked like a dude” - was an early sign of his marketing savvy. Six months later, Macklemore released his debut album, the Budo-produced The Language of My World, and was soon pulling in a couple thousand dollars a month from his music.

Haggerty and Karp moved into a Seattle house with several other roommates, intending to record a lot more music together. Instead, Haggerty took his partying to a new level, and shut down creatively.

“There were two entrances to the house,” recalls Karp, “and he would definitely slink out of the basement entrance, as deference to the fact that he was not the most popular guy in the house.”

Despite his fears about MySpace dating, Haggerty responded on day to a message from a lovely young blond woman named Tricia Davis, who had been smitten by one of his early songs on a Seattle radio station.

They went on a picnic, and if you don't count their multiple breakups, they've been together ever since.

if he didn't try hard enough, then at least he would never have tried really hard and failed.”

One night, Haggerty did a bunch of coke and Ecstasy, and his heart started beating too fast; it wouldn't slow down. He went to a hospital, where they treated him “like complete shit” when he had to admit to the drug use. “It wasn't technically an overdose,” he says. “It was a bad reaction.” But even that experience wasn't enough to make him stop what had become “kind of a hodgepodge.

A little bit of cocaine. A little bit of Oxy. A little bit of lean. A little bit of Percocet. Just whatever I could get my hands on at the time, mixed with copious amounts of weed and ridiculous amounts of alcohol.”

His dad eventually stepped in and persuaded him to go to rehab. The program worked, but when he got out he moved straight into his parents' basement. He was 25 years old and hadn't released an album in three years. “It was so humbling,” he says.

“I felt like I had blown a rap career.”

“THERE WAS THE FEELING His producer, Karp, was off working THAT IF HE DIDN’T TRY HARD on his own music. Deeply depressed, ENOUGH, THEN AT LEAST HE Haggerty placated his parents by WOULD NEVER HAVE TRIED finally finishing the two credits that REALLY HARD AND FAILED.” had kept him from actually getting his But Davis showed up just in time to Evergreen degree (he took a publicwitness a total meltdown. “He was speaking course at a community addicted to marijuana, and I gave college). But his mom and dad were him an ultimatum,” she recalls. “And starting to push him to get a job. “And he quit and he sobered up for the that's when Ryan and I started to next four months and we fell in work together,” he recalls. love with both of us pretty much Ryan Lewis isn't the selfcompletely sober. Then we went on sabotaging type, and he had all tour and he relapsed and that was the confidence that Haggerty had when the next four years of hard-drug started to lose. “None of this would've use and lies and cheating started.” happened without Ryan,” says Davis struggled to figure out the duo's manager, Zach Quillen.

Haggerty's behavior, and concluded Five years younger than Haggerty, it was classic self-sabotage. “It Lewis had grown up in Spokane, always really pissed me off,” she Washington, the son of liberal says. “Because I came from a really Christian parents who worked with poor family, and I would look at his non-profits. There's a huge tattoo of family and they had, like, this idyllic an AIDS ribbon on his right forearm: upbringing, and I couldn't figure it out. His mom had contracted HIV from a I was resentful that he felt entitled to blood transfusion in 1984, the year have a problem where he needed to before nationwide blood-supply escape. Escape from what? But the screening began. It took years before more I've gotten to know him - and she was diagnosed, and Lewis and this might sound corny - his music his two siblings avoided the virus at and art is so exactly what he was put birth by sheer luck. here to do, and his biggest fear was Though doctors once gave her failure. There was the feeling that three years to live, his mother is still otherside.com | OTHERSIDE | 45

doing well - but her condition loomed combines rapper Slug and producer over Lewis' life (and the lawsuit over Ant); they were originally going to the transfusion paid for his college call themselves Vs., which instead education). “It changed my whole became the name of the EP. Lewis upbringing,” says Lewis, sitting in a insisted that the artist credit include diner not far from Macklemore and both of their names. “I told him that Lewis' two-story headquarters, which I wouldn't do it unless my name was include a brand-new, still-unused on it,” says Lewis, who speaks rapidly, recording studio. “And I think for me, with an almost actorly emphasis you know, coming up from a middleon each word. “Because people class, Christian family, it spiced up were getting ditched. People were my knowledge of life a little bit.” making records and getting no credit, Lewis went through a hip-hop getting no pay. He'd gone to rehab, phase around the sixth grade, but he'd gone back, his buzz had gone he became a rock fan, learning down that he'd worked really hard Metallica and Green Day songs on to get. And the both of us, on some guitar and eventually playing in metal level, were a little bit starting from and screamo bands. When he was 15, square one. And I was going to do his parents moved from Spokane to the photography, the graphic design, Seattle. His tastes shifted toward the redesign our MySpace pages, make Postal Service, Wu-Tang Clan and a website, mix a record, make al RJD2, and he started making beats. the beats, record all of the people, He was also getting into graphic engineer it, track all of them. I was design and photography, and found a like, ‘This is about to be Macklemore niche taking pictures of local rappers. and Ryan Lewis.’”

Macklemore was one of them, and Haggerty had finally gotten the he also bought one of Lewis' early day job his parents had pushed for, beats. Haggerty liked Lewis, despite taking a few shifts selling hats. But his youth and the fact that he was so the EP, which included the Red Hot hyper Haggerty though he was on Chili Peppers sampling drug lament Adderall (he wasn't).

“Otherside,” was connecting locally.

Post-rehab, Macklemore and After selling a couple grand worth of Lewis decided to do an EP together. merchandise at a show opening for Originally, the idea was that they Seattle hip-hop heroes Blue Scholars, were forming a group a la indie Haggerty quit the job, and he and hip-hop crew Atmosphere (which Lewis got to work on a full album.

“I THINK ON THE MAINSTREAM LEVEL, NOBODY KNOWS WHO THE FUCK I AM. AM I THE DJ? DO I MAKE THE BEATS? DO I RAP? AM I SINGING ON THE TRACKS?” 46 | OTHERSIDE | otherside.com

Their guest stars were homegrown they found Wanz, the middle-aged dude who sings the hook on “ThriftShop,” because they heard he “kind of sounds like Nate Dogg”; and the writer and singer on the “Same Love” hook is fledgling singer-songwriter Mary Lambert. They recorded in a 500-square-foot storage space in a rough neighborhood, inhaling fumes from a nearby paint shop. Their budget was so nonexistent that Lewis admits to pirating the horn sample collection that he used for the sax part on “Thrift Shop.”

Lewis' ear for pop hooks - and eye for music videos - is a huge part of The Heist's success. He's at every live performance, where his role is DJ, hype man and occasional cymbal crasher. But he knows he's a “horrible rapper,” and will never make a Puffystyle move to the mic. “I think on the mainstream level, nobody knows who the fuck I am. Am I the DJ? Do I make the beats? Do I rap? Am I singing on the tracks? I don't think a lot of people know except real fans who have been around. The public does not really care how the song came together.

And I can't change that. So if I have jealousy, deriving from that, then that's just stupid.”

Lewis would eventually like to direct movies and maybe do some acting - he specifically mentions that he'd like to do a better film adaptation of Orwell's 1984, and remake 12 Angry Men while he's at it. And he’s trying to take the long view of his current situation.

“It would be naive to think that you can really judge the pros and cons of it right now,” Lewis says. “Ask me again in 10 years. And the producer gets the better end of the stick, for sure. Because when Macklemore's burnt out, my brand isn't necessarily, you know?”

Haggerty has sympathy for Lewis' position, and it helps that the two men are close friends. “Ryan's job, by nature, is a behind-the-scenes type of job,” he says. “My job is the front man in our group. It's just the way that it is. And Ryan can wish that it was a different way, but that's just the reality of it. I think that's been an evolving lesson for him to learn as we continue to make music and he busts

(LEFT TO RIGHT) TRICIA DAVIS, BEN HAGGERTY (MACKLEMORE), JACKIE BADILLAC, AND RYAN LEWIS AT THE MTV AWARDS IN 2013 his ass just as hard, if not harder than me. But I'm gonna be in front. That's just the nature of it.”

Heading back down the steps of his old high school, Haggerty acknowledges that he will always be at risk for a relapse. He's been too busy for AA meetings, too busy to do the kind of charity work he sees as key to his recovery. “I know that I'm not working the program to the best of my ability, and when I'm not doing that, then I think that there’s room for mistake. And I would be naive to think that I'm above that.”

He's feeling pretty settled otherwise. He'd like to have kids soon, and no longer feels tempted to indulge in the kind of on-the-road infidelity he'd painfully confess to Tricia the next day. (It probably doesn't hurt that she's their tour manager.) Lewis is in a relationship too, and he says they haven't had to doge as much temptation as you would necessarily think: “We're not like a Tyrese or something, you know what I mean?” So much of the fan base is so young that there's just enough of a gap that you don't

have that, like, ‘I've got 25-year-olds coming up, trying to fuck.’”

“I look at my peers,” says Haggerty, “and a lot of them are in relationships and yet are no monogamous or they're not in relationships. And your mind kind of goes, ‘What if?’ You know, ‘What could I be doing right now? Who could I be dating?’ But I ended up with the right person. I'm a dude, I'm gonna question that shit, but I go out and I don't even feel tempted anymore, which is a beautiful thing.

And I don't really have the time or energy to go, like, have sex with a bunch of strangers right now. It's just not where I'm at in life.”

Haggerty is pretty sure that by the time he and Lewis start their first arena tour this fall - which includes three Seattle shows - he'll be financially set for life. “It relieves a lot of pressure,” he says. At the same time, he's no longer worried about what felt like a lack of acceptance from the hip-hop community. Hot 97 has started playing “Same Love,” in spite of Rosenberg's concern that Lambert “sounds like Melissa

Etheridge.” A few weeks back, Haggerty met Jay Z, who had some kind words.

But is he happy? Haggerty thinks about it for a long while, staring at a stoplight from underneath his had and sunglasses. “Happiness for me is a relatively impermanent thing,” he says. “I think in general... I would say yes. I would say that I'm grateful that the work that I've put in has equated to me being here in this position now. I could never anticipated what it would actually be like when I got here. But I'm still learning to live within this reality, and it's a challenge to uphold any sort of normalcy, to have time for my family, to have time for my girlfriend, to have time for myself. It's been a struggle the past six months but I think that I'm learning to live within it.”

A couple of minutes later, unprompted, he revises his answer.

“You know, you always want to say that you're happy,” he says quietly.

“Particularly when you have an immense amount of success and money and power and all that sort of stuff. And you feel like a bitch if you complain. But I think it's been a learning process, and I don't know if I'm fully there yet.”

The next afternoon, Tricia finds Haggerty lying on a couch in the modest two-bedroom apartment that they haven't had a chance to move out of, despite their success. He's coming down with the flu, and seems out of sorts. She tells him to “put on fucking shoes” and head to an AA meeting for the first time in weeks.

Haggerty grumbles, but in the end, he grabs his Nikes and walks right out of the door. O

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ARTISTS’ TATTOOS AND WHAT THEY REALLY MEAN Q You have “No Woman, No cry” tattooed on your chest—do you have a girlfriend? And is she inked?

A Yes and yes. “No Woman, No Cry” actually has nothing to do with the whole girl thing. I’ve actually never told anybody what it means. I don’t even think my friends know. Everyone just always thought it was because of Bob Marley. The reason why I actually got “No Woman, No Cry” is because when my grandpa died, I was driving home, and it hadn’t really hit me that he died. I was leaving the hospital when he died, and I was listening to that song, and I started crying.

I thought it was kind of ironic. So now the song has meaning to me.

MAC MILLER “The most personal one is probably the quote. The Martian Luther King quote that I have on my stomach. ‘The ultimate measure of a man is not where he stands in moments of comfort and convenience, but where he stands at times of challenge and controversy.’ That’s the most personal, and most important to me because that describes my life, you know my career, what I’ve really been through, you know, as an individual. And I got it when I was young, you know, and then it just started to make sense as life when on, you know. It signifies what I really really believe in as a person, as a man, and what I wish I could preach on everybody else.”

WIZ KHALIFA

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Rihanna got her personal motto “Never a failure, always a lesson” tattooed just below her right shoulder, backwards, so she can read it in the mirror. The artist said: “‘It’s kind of my motto in life for everything.’ Instead of considering things to be mistakes, considering them lessons. She said that she wanted to do it in gray, rather than black, because she wanted it to be more subtle, she didn’t want it to draw too much attention.”

RIHANNA

KID INK The most meaningful one I have would have to be two. I have two portraits on my chest: one which is my mom and one is my grandfather, which is her dad. Those are really the only two family members that I had growing up that were older than me that set my life up and made me who I am today. So those are the most meaningful tattoos.