After dropping his Gemini album in 2017 and touring it through the summer of 2018, Seattle rapper Macklemore went quiet for a little bit. He then came back with a couple of singles in 2021 but tonight, he makes his grand return with the release of his first project in five and a half years, the self-titled Ben.
Of course, the rapper has been associated with the infamous GRAMMYs moment with Kendrick Lamar and his great commercial success, so some get turned off by it, but the first single with Premier called ‘HEROES‘ turned a lot of heads, impressing people.
Below, you can stream the full album.
During a recent interview with Apple Music, he spoke on his drug relapse and trip to India.
“I remember it was after the Grammys, and my wife and I, my fiance at the time, we went to India. And I look back on that time period, and there was so much fear. And the reason why there was fear is because, again, I was living to escape. I was back. I had been on drugs. I remember a couple days before the Grammys, I started trying to taper off, because I knew that I was going to be dope sick by the time that the Grammys hit. I was relapsing. Yeah. I was relapsing on and off that entire… I was in active addiction that year, and… I remember taking the last pill. We were in Mexico. And trying to time it out so I wouldn’t be dope sick. And I was so fucking scared, and it wasn’t like what was going to… It was all of the things at once, but the center of it is I had lost my faith. I was living in fear. The opposite of faith is fear. The opposite of hate is love. I was in that place of just, I don’t know how to do this. I can’t exist without drugs right now. And I want to be understood, and people don’t understand me. The minute that I got clean again after India, or in India, all of a sudden, it was like, “Ah! There is it. There’s my spirit. I lost that dude. I know exactly who I am. I know exactly what got me here. I remember the magic that makes me who I am.” I had forgotten it… it was almost instantaneously, and then the process opened back up.”
