5.8.2013
By Stacy Lambe, OUT Magazine
How a straight white rapper from Seattle wrote hip-hop's first gay anthem.
Handsome, fabulously dressed in a bright red suit that fits snugly on his slender frame, with perfectly cropped and coiffed hair. At first glance, one could take Macklemore (real name: Ben Haggerty) for the nation's first mainstream gay rapper. 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). 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. (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. And that, in a roundabout way, is what brings him here this evening.
Read full article here: The Making of Macklemore
Source: OUT Magazine OUT.com