Macklemore performs at BottleRock Napa Valley in Napa on May 26, 2017. Alessio Neri/STAFF.

Ben “Macklemore” Haggerty doesn’t like to spend $50 on a T-shirt. That much is clear upon listening to “Thrift Shop,” a four-minute ode to the joys of finding a bargain that’s on the Seattle hip-hop artist’s new album, “The Heist.”

The 29-year-old’s home is decorated with thrift store taxidermy, furniture and lamps. In his closets hang fringe jackets and outerwear of purple, red and blue leather.

When he performs Sunday at the Fillmore in The City, he will no doubt wear his fringe jacket adorned with the face of David Bowie.

While Macklemore painted Bowie himself, the jacket was a thrift shop find.

“The gems of a thrift shop are found when you have no expectations,” he says. “I like to look in the women’s section, I like to look in the toy section. You never know what you’re going to find, and it’s just about being aware and present (about) what pops up. You’ve got to be open to whatever the universe is going to give you that’s used.”

The rapper and producer-DJ Ryan Lewis, who were on the cover of hip-hop magazine XXL’s 2012 up-and-comers issue — are not above trying to get a good deal.

But the concept is not just played out for laughs. Macklemore’s message is that expensive clothes, bling and other traditional connotations of wealth shouldn’t change people.

The insight plays out on “Jimmy Iovine,” a fictional account about the rapper being offered a record deal from the head of Interscope Records before he realizes he’s better off as an independent artist.

“It was always a dream to be signed to a record label and to be under the umbrella of a great franchise,” he says. “Once we worked so hard to get to the point where record labels were interested in us, (that’s) when I realized that I didn’t want what they had to offer.”

And on “Wings,” Macklemore recounts a tale about his childhood desire to own a pair of Nike Air Jordans, believing they could make him fly, only to realize they are just an expensive pair of shoes.

“It’s a brand, and it’s the way we perceive ourselves,” he says. “They’re actually not real, tangible things that have any real impact on our lives except on how we perceive ourselves and how others perceive us.”

Whether it’s ridiculing hip-hop’s bling culture and anti-gay sentiments, or speaking candidly about how drugs hurt him and his family in the past, Macklemore has never shied away from getting personal in his music.

He says it’s “the only way that I know how to write music. It’s where everything comes from: being honest, first and foremost with myself, and then inevitably with the audience.”

Macklemore wants Far East holiday, Mariners in playoffs

Q&A: The rapper named himself after former baseball player Mark McLemore and recently threw out the first pitch at a Seattle Mariners game.

Since the Mariners aren’t in the playoffs, is there a team you are rooting for? 

Macklemore: Not really. I’m like a Mariners fan or nobody. When it comes down to baseball outside of the Mariners, I’m pretty much rooting against the Yankees.

What happens after this album and tour; do you have any plans?

Macklemore: After the tour, I want to go with my girlfriend to live in a different place for a little while.  Just for a month, month and a half before we go back out on the road and start writing the new album, from some place else beside Seattle, that’s like a different vantage point. I want to travel a little bit that has nothing to do with making music. We’re looking at New Orleans, or we want to go to the eastern part of the world. New Orleans is a fascinating place to me. The culture is very fascinating there. They have alligators. I’m interested in the bayou. I’m interested in a slower pace of life. A little bit more remote than the city, which I grew up in and never really left. In terms of going over to the eastern part of world, whether it be India or we talked about a couple different places – Thailand, is that that’s very removed from the pace of life that I know, the culture that I know, but essentially too much because you still have to be relatively connected to what’s going on in Seattle. The time zone is going to be completely different, and it might be challenging to take care of any business from India.

You have songs about your own struggles with drugs and alcohol; what’s your thinking about sharing so much? Do you think more hip hop artists should bare more of their true selves?

Macklemore: I can’t tell any artists how to write. Being personal is the only way that I know how to write music. It’s where everything comes from; being honest first and foremost with myself, and then inevitably with the audience that ends up listening to it. For me, writing has always been a way of processing my life on a piece of paper, and it just so happens that people are listening to that. That piece of paper turns into a song. I can’t say that other people should do that at all. I like a lot of vain abstracts rap as well that I don’t necessarily leave knowing who the artist is, but I like the imagery that they paint.

Do you have a big-picture idea of what path you want your music career to take, or are you taking things one step at a time?

Macklemore: I think it’s one step at a time, and it’s one day at a time. At the same time, I have goals, and I have dreams, and I want to work hard to achieve them. I think that for the remainder of my life on this earth, I would love to have a career doing what I love to do – being creative, being an artist, and working on projects that inspire me and could potentially inspire other human beings. Right now, that’s making music, making rap records. I love to get into helping other people put out music. I would love to form some sort of label, on the independent side that helps develop artists and brands, and I love fashion, I love design, I love acting. I love all sorts of things that revolve around being creative, so I don’t know where my life will take me, but right now it’s full-fledged into this music. I’m absolutely, 100-percent grateful every day that I get to do this for my job.

Follow editor Roman Gokhman at Twitter.com/RomiTheWriter.