I've been wearing it to start off the sets.' Don't expect him to hold on to it for long, though. I would definitely venture to say that it was owned by a large woman at some point. What was Haggerty's last great thrift-shop bargain? 'It's a kind of a bootleg-Chanel warm-up jacket that's black, gold and white. Lewis doesn't rule out the possibility of partnering with a major in the future, but if that happens, 'it'll probably be a very specific partnership that's not very conventional.' 'If we had gotten some of these offers a year ago, we might have put out a different album,' Haggerty says. But once you sell 78,000 copies in your first week, the leverage tilts in your favor immensely.' Had some recent propositions come before the release of The Heist, the duo might have been inclined to accept them, to their detriment.

'Going into the album, we had a certain amount of leverage: Our YouTube plays were great, and our fan base was impressive. 'In dealing with labels and offers, it's all about leverage,' Haggerty says. 2 debut on Billboard's album chart last October, they became much more appealing to major record labels вЂ“ and much harder to get. The grand Heist: After the duo's independently released The Heist sold 78,000 units in its first week, for a No. Just don't call him 'Mackle.' 'I don't know who that is, and I don't want to know that person.' 'Macklemore' stuck.' Friends call Haggerty 'Ben,' but 'Macklemore' is fine, he says. 'When I would do that, I would call myself 'Professor Macklemore.' Years later, I dropped the 'Professor,' but I couldn't think of a better rap name. 'I would dress up in the most eclectic, weird, Prince/David Bowie-looking outfits I could possibly come up with,' he says. The name game: Haggerty picked up the 'Macklemore' moniker while attending a Brooklyn art program during his high-school years. 'It's rare to have a collaboration that's long-lasting like that.' 'We both have had an equal hand in all the aspects of our brand, even to the fonts and the specifics,' says Lewis, 24. They began their musical collaboration two years later. Lyricist/frontman Macklemore (born Ben Haggerty) met Lewis, who handles the act's production and visual branding, via MySpace in 2006. But there's a deeper side to the Seattle-based duo: Same Love, an earlier single, takes hip-hop and religious cultures to task over their treatment of same-sex attraction, and The Heist was one of 2012's smartest and least predictable hip-hop albums. And Spotify says it was the streaming service's second-most-popular track at midnight on New Year's Eve, behind Psy's Gangnam Style. Thrift Shop, Macklemore & Ryan Lewis' paean to secondhand style, just reached a million downloads, according to Nielsen SoundScan.

The new year includes a tour of Australia and New Zealand and, ideally, some studio time.

2 on the 'Billboard' album chart, behind Mumford & Sons' 'Babel'

The duo's 'Heist' album made its debut at No.

'Thrift Shop' was Spotify's second-most-played song at midnight on New Year's Eve.

Growing up macklemore spotify