The success that Macklemore & Ryan Lewis saw in 2013 was unmatched. The popular duo released what would be their debut album The Heist and did everything from selling millions of records, to having multiple songs on the radio, to winning Grammys — they did it all.

Songs like “Thrift Shop,” “Same Love” and “Can’t Hold Us” will go down as some of the most important hip-hop records of recent memory and now’s the time for the super duo to re-create that feeling.

The Seattle stars recently sat down with Complex for an in-depth cover story for the magazine’s August/September issue where they reminisced on The Heist‘s success and looked forward to their sophomore effort. As expected, these two talented artists are very particular with their music and spend hours and hours working on their craft. “We dig into a song. We have one right now that I’m a year and a half into,” says Ryan Lewis.

Apparently, the duo is in the final stage of the album creation, according to Macklemore. “The hardest part of making an album is always the last quarter,” Ben (Macklemore’s real name) admits. “The last quarter is really the most intensive, the most stressful, the most arguments between me and Ryan, the most challenging.”

As expected, the worry of a sophomore slump is unavoidable for Macklemore and he says he went through that process and is finally past it. “I think I was in a place of sophomore slump jinx fear until I started writing songs again,” says the Seattle rapper.

But now, the crew is ready to take on the challenges and plan to use everything they’ve learned in the last few years as fuel. Macklemore is going to be a father soon, him and Ryan’s company Macklemore LLC is flourishing and now the only thing left to do is deliver a successful sophomore album that matches (or closely matches) that of The Heist.

Can they do it? We’ll have to wait and see. Read the entire cover story by Complex here.