With their newest song, Macklemore and Ryan Lewis have surely grown up.
Long gone are the days when the two young men sifted through Thrift Shop clothes. Instead, the duo, along with Ed Sheeran, just released a new song called “Growing Up (Sloane’s Song),” which pays homage to Macklemore’s 2-month-old baby daughter, Sloane Ava Simone Taggerty.
In the song, Macklemore, whose real name is Ben Taggerty, explains what kind of father he hopes to be.
“I could promise you that I’ll try and work less, but the tour’s routed and I got this album,” he raps. “Put in so many hours, and I just want the outcome to be something that I can look back and I can be proud of. Don’t wanna be a dad that’s living in Facetime, but I got a world to sing to and you at the same time.”
Macklemore decided to write this song following his descent back into drug and alcohol abuse, which he initially struggled with before his career skyrocketed, according to an emotional letter that Macklemore and Ryan Lewis posted on their website.
The success of songs like “Thrift Shop” and “Can’t Hold Us” led him down the dark road again. But after he found out his partner Tricia Davis was pregnant last year, Macklemore realized he had to clean up his act and become the father he wanted to be for his daughter, he said in the letter.
“I’ve always had some make-believe image in my head of who I would be as a father,” Taggerty wrote. “But in actuality the hypothetical ‘dad’ version of me looked completely different than the man whose heart was beating out of chest on the carpet, praying to a god or spirit I hadn’t talked to in months. When Tricia walked out of the bathroom, I knew. And I knew I had to change."
Listen to the heartwarming new song below:
Herb Scribner is a writer for Deseret News National. Send him an email at hscribner@deseretdigital.com or follow him on Twitter @herbscribner.