In an interview about “Can’t Hold Us“ and the tour he was on, Macklemore was asked about the inspiration for the song and responded:

Ryan [Lewis] had the beat a long time ago, like he made that beat in two thousand seven/eight-ish. And I was always just kind of intimidated to write to it, ‘cause it sounded like it was a soccer anthem […]. Finally he’s like “You do have to write to it!“ and I finally listened to him and I, I wrote to it. We had these verses in place when we were going on tour and […] I don’t remember what we did to the hook, but it wasn’t what it ended up being, it was something else. And when we got back, we knew we wanted to knock it out and we had Ray Dalton in mind for it, Ray came over. He kinda had like a melody idea and I wrote the lyrics to it and we all collaborated on what I wrote and fine tuned it and then turned it then turned it to this song. But Ryan put in tons of effort like with Owuour Arunga, trumpet, trombone player Greg – I don’t know his last name; Greg [Kramer], I’m sorry –, but a bunch of amazing musicians got on it, awarded all the arrangements of Greg for the trombone, it’s just a big collaboration, but Ryan put tons and tons, tons of hours into what it is today.