“The moment somebody asks, ‘What’s your tattoo of?’ they regret it,” says Lewis, “because it’s like, ‘Oh shit. Then, often, an awkward exchange follows. It’s the type of striking tattoo that immediately elicits questions. I f you happen to catch Lewis with his sleeves rolled up, your eyes are instantly drawn to the red ink looping around the center of his right forearm and forming a ribbon. On the surface, the Lewis household seemed to live a perfectly charmed life, but there was a deeper, more private struggle that the family had to face every day. A big part of his upbringing revolved around Young Life, including spending 13 summers at the group’s Malibu camp in British Columbia with the family. Lewis was an active kid who got involved in soccer, football, skateboarding, snowboarding and anything else that could get him outside and hold his interest. Lewis has also two sisters, Laura and Teresa, respectively two and four years older than him. His parents, Scott and Julie Lewis, both worked for nonprofits, with his dad spending many years as regional director for the Christian youth organization Young Life. The Lewis clan is a tight-knit, middle-class, conservative Christian family who moved from Puyallup to a home near Browne’s Mountain in Spokane when Lewis was 2. Then again, ever since his earliest days growing up in Spokane, the 24-year-old Lewis has only been trying to speed things up. And while the duo is temporarily back in their home base of Seattle for the first time since embarking on a 75-show world tour - since singing for Ellen DeGeneres (twice), since being featured in NBA All-Star Game promos, since this whole thing blew up - there’s no time to slow down. It’s an unexpected and triumphant return home for Macklemore and Lewis, who in the past year went from buzzworthy Seattle sensation to chart-topping hitmakers. After playing two more singles (“Same Love” and “Can’t Hold Us”), they announce that they’re one of the Sasquatch! headliners. The crowd has officially been whipped into a frenzy - even the balcony dwellers are on their feet dancing. Macklemore, Ben Haggerty to his friends, has the audience hanging on every syllable with his effortless charisma, while Lewis mostly stays in the back, behind the equipment table, acting as DJ/hype man. The uproar peaks as Macklemore and Lewis take the stage and launch into “Thrift Shop,” their hit single about bargain-bin fashion shopping. 1 song in America - and everyone begins losing their minds. The event’s MC announces that some very special guests are in the house - ones who happen to have the No. Everyone’s now awaiting the announcement of this year’s festival lineup and a set by indie rock mainstays Built to Spill. In the theater, a packed crowd mills around after a set by Cody ChesnuTT as part of Sasquatch! Festival’s 2013 launch party. It’s just Lewis and his small team of cohorts chilling out before they get down to business. The room isn’t packed with friends and family, and there’s no party vibe. The atmosphere is more reserved than one might expect. Success has only intensified Macklemore’s conflicted relationship with rap: On his 2017 solo single, “Good Old Days”, he looks back fondly at his early years as an unknown MC trying to break into the game however, the track’s elegant, ascendant piano chords and heartrending Kesha cameo suggests he’s grown evermore accustomed to playing the crowd-pleasing pop star.R yan Lewis casually stretches, drinks a Red Bull and waits in the green room of Seattle’s Neptune Theatre. Their 2012 self-released debut, The Heist, crashed the Billboard Top 5 and scooped up four Grammys thanks to a string of unlikely crossover hits-like the sax-squawked anti-luxury anthem “Thrift Shop” and the pro-LGBTQ ballad “Same Love”-that betrayed his love of pre-millennial hip-hop sounds while interrogating some of the genre’s problematic materialist and homophobic tendencies. Upon connecting with producer Ryan Lewis in 2009, Macklemore finally acquired the megaphone that allowed him to project his big ideas to the masses. But during those DIY days, Macklemore developed a reputation for intense introspection and keen cultural observations-on his 2005 track “White Privilege”, he examined not only the gentrification of hip-hop from black street music to commercial commodity but also his own complicity in that process as a white MC. Hip-hop, he said, was “my means of trying to figure out who I am, and to figure out my truth, and look at society and get closer to a connection to something much bigger than myself.” It would take some time for him to make that greater connection: The MC born Benjamin Haggerty in 1983 dropped his first mixtape in 2000 and spent the next decade doing the underground grind. In a 2016 interview with Apple Music, Seattle rapper Macklemore recounted the moment when, at age 17, he realised his life’s true calling.
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