Macklemore and Ryan Lewis have just announced that the follow up to their massive 2012 hit record The Heist is due to come out this February via a two minute trailer.
Titled The Unruly Mess I’ve Made, the record is due to come out on February 26th. The trailer is narrated by Macklemore who describes the story behind the album:
“I couldn’t escape. I’d been escaping the whole time. I had to finally look. Look at the mess we had made. In all its lacquered glory and its tarnished failures. Stare at it. Understand it. And then leave. I was too comfortable. Being comfortable is what kills artists.
There is creativity for validation. And there is creativity for survival. They are very different places. I didn’t know what I wanted to say. Didn’t know how the ink would stick to the page. How to let go of the anxiety and suffocating fear that latched on to my vocal cords. I had to figure out how to use my voice again. So, we went ghost. The Irish Goodbye, into the woods, in the dead of winter. We bought a 1985 Suburban, loaded up some equipment and left town.
People make music for all different reasons. It’s the fabric that connects us. We dance together, we cry together. We celebrate our communities, we question our politics, we laugh, we scream, we imagine.
What I couldn’t find in a hotel room, on the road or in Seattle, I found in the middle of nowhere. No reception. Making music not because we had to, but because we got to. I had forgotten how to do that. Not being afraid of the platform we were standing on. Not creating from a place of “don’t fuck up” but creating from a place of “fuck it up”. Look at the mess. Not just the one we created, but the one that is the very fabric of our country. The mess we’re all living in. Stop being silent. Even if it’s not perfect, or politically correct, you have to speak up and you have to listen.
Dance, cry, question everything, laugh, scream, imagine, live. Music was never intended to be programmed, manufactured or made into a commodity. Music was intended to be the one thing we can rely on to disrupt the norm. Start conversations and change the way we think and feel. If you aren’t scared of what you’ve created, you aren’t done yet.
I didn’t know what we would leave the woods with, but I do now. On February 26th I want to share with you, This Unruly Mess I’ve Made.”
It’s all very epic.
