See, that’s what the app is perfect for.

Ryan: Magic is real. 

Macklemore: I’m thinking. Immediately, I go to a sexual place which feels… wrong. I don’t really want to read people’s minds. 

Ryan: There’s so many spells that are ultimately going to not make you happy. I say flying. It’s cool, it’s not going to fuck with you psychologically. 

[both laughing]

Macklemore: I second that. 

Ryan: I just started watching Ozarks. It’s pretty dramatic. 

Macklemore: It’s good. I’d still go with Breaking Bad. Ozarks is good, it’s new. 

Ryan: Narcos is good. 

Macklemore: The OA? The OA I loved. 

Ryan: Always. I mean, we are always collaborating. Not always musically, but also visually. I think there’s people that like to be art a private process, and others who want it to be a communal process. And I like to meet people and do new things with others.

Macklemore: And at this point, I’ve been doing music for a long time, and we’ve made music together for a long time. It just depends on what you care about - is it, I need to make the beats, I need to make the melody, etc. Or are you trying to create the best song possible, and sometimes Ryan might play a piano line and it turns into “Same Love”, or there’s a better piano player than him. Or I have the melody down, but there’s someone out there that might have the beats.

I care more about the final product of this song, versus me being the only person making it for the bragging rights. 

Ryan: And that’s the beauty of rapping. There’s a reason why rapping and hip hop has had more legs - because it gets re along other genres constantly. if rappers were just going to rap beats, then you wouldn’t see rappers rise.

Macklemore: Tricia. 

Ryan: Before she was a mom, she was a mom. 

Ryan: Sometimes you do, sometimes you don’t. There are others who just write about relationships and weed. You find a lot of inspiration when you just do it, and when you’re a musician, you try as much as you can, and sometimes you have to force it. I’m a conceptionalist writer, and for some reason, I get most excited by a concept for a song or video that’s going to set it apart. Something that hasn’t been fully talked about - and when that’s out there, it gives you a prompt to make it. 

We were given a dead and frozen goldfish to SIGN. We didn’t even get to keep it.

Macklemore: I know Ryan’s: a lint roller and an electric beard buzzer. 

Ryan: Ben’s would probably be ginger and the raven Bowie wig. 

Macklemore: Kanye

Ryan: For whatever reason, I don’t really give a shit how well I do or don’t do. I think there’s people who are hyper focused on what they’re doing at the moment, taste makers or people out there doing stuff that’s a little different. I’m in the third group. There’s a risk that you go ham and you wildly go in a different direction and it’s not what people want right now. 

Macklemore: We met on the internet, on Myspace.

Ryan: We started working together when I was doing photography, and so at that time I wasn’t good at making beats. Then I was getting in graphic design, so when I started doing beats, I started doing visuals for Macklemore.

Macklemore: My grandfather walking in on me jacking off. Full dick exposed. I couldn’t even hide it. 

Ryan: I’m just going to let [him] win that one. 

Ryan: Clue, the movie. Hands down. Fantastic. Also, Indiana Jones. 

Macklemore: I’m gonna go with, Scarface. Ha. I really love the movie Four Rooms. The other movie I love, that’s a classic is Groundhog Day. I think about it probably once a month.  

Macklemore: It was suggested by Molly Nordstrom, and I loved the name. It means, like, warrior out there in Ireland. And I love Ferris Bueller’s Day Off, and Sloane was beautiful. 

Macklemore: I wanted to be on a stage and I wanted to be a rapper at a very young age. 

Ryan: I didn’t want to be anything in particular. Oh wait, Indiana Motherfuckin’ Jones. That’s what I wanted to be. 

Macklemore: Same Love was inspired by reading an article my mom sent me about a kid who was bullied in school and committed suicide because he was gay. And I tried to write in the perspective of the bullied kid, which Ryan told was a horrible idea, and then I rewrote it.

Macklemore: I really love, I can’t pick my number one thing - it’s like picking your favorite song. I love so much about Ryan. I think Ryan’s enthusiasm is very contagious with those that he’s around. He’s a passionate person about ideas, different ways of thinking, creativity, processing the world in which we live. He makes people around him not only better, but excited to be working on whatever the task is at hand. 

Ryan: There’s a lot to love about Ben. There’s a lot. Ben is hilarious. My favorite thing about Ben is he’s one of those very few people in your life that is unconditional. I can come to him creatively dead or super inspired or annoyingly enthusiastic about an idea and Ben shows up for me. That shit is only built through time, experience, trust and dynamics. It’s kind of the difference between someone you see as family and a brother… vs another homie. 

Macklemore: For me, it’s finding a balance music - and when I say, it’s music, it’s everything that comes with it - marketing, photo shoots, doing a Tumblr Q&A - and my recovery (which holds my music and life together) and my family life. If one starts taking dominance, well really, if music takes dominance over my recovery and my family then it’s trouble. 

Macklemore: As a musician, it is difficult to find a fan base. To figure out who is going to resonate with your work and how you’re going to engage. How you get people to care when there are so many artists competing for the same spotlight. How do you stick out, and you can spend money, you can hire a publicist, you can sign to a label, but at the end of the day, how do you get people to organically care about what you do. And that was difficult for us. and it happened over time organically - it didn’t happen overnight. 

Ryan: I’d imagine in 2017, a ton of artists might have the opposite answer, which is the most difficult part of rising to success is how quickly it can happen and how unprepared you can be for it.