On this night in March, when he performs "Same Love" halfway through the show, it doesn't seem like Macklemore standing there, but Ben Haggerty himself. That period of confusion, and his sympathy for his ostracized peer, has stayed with him. His mother, a social worker, reassured him that he was straight, but not without encouraging him to take up ballet lessons as a display of solidarity for a classmate who was being bullied. My whole upbringing was around gay people." Macklemore grew up Catholic, but was questioning his sexuality by the third grade. ![]() My uncles owned this restaurant that was a huge magnet for the gay community. "Where I grew up, there were huge gay pride parades less than a mile away from me," Macklemore says. The men closest to him - his uncle Johnny and his godfather - are gay. "He's had a strong influence on us throughout the years." Macklemore was raised in Capitol Hill, a liberal, gay-friendly district of Seattle. "Growing up with a gay uncle and having him be a huge part of our family - I don't think my parents' outlook would be the same if it weren't for him," Lewis says. Lewis's uncle is gay and has been living with HIV for 30 years. They aren't the only attendees making bold, slightly absurd fashion choices: More than a couple dozen guys sport used fur coats, an homage to Macklemore's video for his biggest single, "Thrift Shop," which, since last August, has had more than 245 million hits.īoth he and Lewis grew up surrounded by gay adults. Now they are here at the Breslin Center at Michigan State University, where, despite the freezing cold, an amped-up pack of scantily clad, boozy teenage girls are waiting to see them play (and doing a shit job of hiding their flasks). Their circuit has taken them from Australia to college towns in the United States, with a stop at the South by Southwest music festival. The duo is on a world tour to promote their independently released debut album, The Heist, which came out in October and has sold more than 500,000 copies. If proof was needed, you could find it on a bracing night in March, when I am standing in line in East Lansing, Mich., to see Macklemore and his DJ and producing partner, Ryan Lewis, at their latest sold-out concert. The artist, now sober, is in the midst of transitioning from a YouTube sensation to a legitimate rapper and entertainer. And that, in a roundabout way, is what brings him here this evening.Īfter 15 years in the game - a stretch that included popular Seattle club gigs, a self-released record titled The Language of My World in 2005, and bouts with substance abuse - Macklemore is suddenly on the verge of bona fide success. (In fact, he's engaged to his tour manager and girlfriend of seven years.) At one point in time, though, he certainly thought he might be gay. ![]() ![]() But such an assumption would be relying too much on the same stereotypes Macklemore himself tackles in his breakthrough single, "Same Love." No, he's not gay. He is, after all, a flashy 29-year-old dandy who saunters around in $450 blue velvet Stubbs & Wootton slippers, an MC who struck gold with a number 1 hit about vintage shopping, and a flamboyant showman who cemented his arrival in March with a rousing performance on Saturday Night Live in which he literally skipped across the stage (it drew 5.8 million viewers). At first glance, one could take Macklemore (real name: Ben Haggerty) for the nation's first mainstream gay rapper. Handsome, fabulously dressed in a bright red suit that fits snugly on his slender frame, with perfectly cropped and coiffed hair. Photography by Hayley Young | Styling by Hilary Folks
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