Photo of Macklemore performing at New York's Roseland Ballroom, by Dimitrios Kambouris/Getty
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Macklemore says he and producer Ryan Lewis are about 75% done with a new album. But he admits there have been some personal struggle along the way.

Telling Complex in a new interview published Tuesday that he "held it together for a while" before eventually ditching his regular 12-step meetings. "I was burnt out. I was super-stressed. We weren’t sleeping — doing a show every day, zigzagging all over the country ... 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."

The Seattle rapper resorted to sleeping pills and marijuana, trying multiple times to quit. But when his fiancée Tricia Davis learned last September that she was pregnant, he realized he needed to "grow up," prompting him to sober up.

Sobriety also impacted the music Macklemore and Lewis made together, including six more serious tracks they recorded in Idaho in addition to ones they had already worked on in Seattle.

Details about the album remain slim, but it is expected in the fourth quarter of the year.