Macklemore and Ryan Lewis cover the September issue of Complex magazine. The cover looks odd with Mack hanging out in the background. They’re playing upon the notion that Lewis generally goes unnoticed, and Macklemore receives all the attention, both good and bad. This interview is a complicated one. After the duo won big at the 2013 Grammys, they went on hiatus. The official explanation is that Macklemore had never taken a real vacation before in his life after struggling as an underground rapper for about a decade.

The revised story in this Complex interview is more complex. Mack reveals how he relapsed into taking sleeping pills as he coped with the pressures of success. He made a few appearances last year, including when he spoke on the Iggy Azalea problem. Macklemore said, “I need to know my place” as a white rapper, and he appeared a little anxious during the interview, and it’s no wonder. The duo received a huge backlash after winning Best Rap Album. Mack now reveals how hard it was to cope with the criticism:

On his pills relapse: “I held it together for a while. But, eventually, I stopped going to my 12-step meetings. I was burnt out. I was super-stressed. In terms of the media I was getting put into a box that I never saw for myself. The pressure and the fame — everything. All the clichés, man — like not being able to walk around, having no privacy, and from this TV appearance to this TV appearance, and the criticism, and the lack of connection, and the lack of meetings — all of that put into one pie was just … I just wanted to escape.”

On his 2004 song, “White Privilege”: “Writing that song in 2004 — that was a different version of me. I was an unknown. I was making an observation: Look at what’s happened. Pointing — not in a negative way — but making cultural observation. Fast-forward 10 years, my vantage point isn’t pointing the finger at anyone else anymore. It’s pointing the finger at myself. It was pointing the finger at myself then, too, questioning things. But it’s different when — cultural appropriation and white privilege in regard to hip-hop — you’re the example.”

He wanted to drop “White Privilege 2” in Times Square on NYE: But “so much was being exposed — with the Grammys, with Iggy, with #BlackLivesMatter” that he had to go back in, again, asking, “How do I participate in this conversation in a way that I’m not preaching, where I’m not appearing like I know it all? ‘Cause I don’t know it all. I’m learning every time I have a conversation around the issue. How do I affect change? How do I not preach to the choir? How do I authentically initiate discourse without co-opting the movement that’s already happening? You are constantly having to check your intention as a white person doing any sort of antiracist work.”

He attended a “Undoing Institutional Racism” workshop: “We were there for six or seven hours and spanned 500 or 600 years. It was a crash course on why things are happening right now. It is so multilayered; it goes back so deep. There’s turning points in history that have equated to why police are treating black men the way that they are in America right now. I got a glimpse of that in seven hours, so you’re definitely not going to hear it in a five-minute CNN talking head thing where people have 30 seconds [and] they’re arguing. You almost can’t even engage in the conversation until you do a little bit of homework, to actually have a real tangible grasp on what’s happening.”

[From Complex]

You can tell Macklemore is still bothered by the backlash he received after the Grammys, which must be rough. He dreamed of selling records and winning awards for many years. Then when it happened, the success only made him feel terrible. That’s rough, but he shows pure intentions in his rapping. He writes about his own experiences, not some fictional persona like Iggy does.

Macklemore and Ryan are gearing up to finish up their next album, and they know people expect them to be commercially successful (as with The Heist). The duo has made peace with knowing they may never reach their previous heights, but Mack has gotten clean. And he’s a new dad! He and Tricia Davis welcomed a baby in June.

Photos courtesy of Complex & WENN