Pittsburgh rapper Mac Miller died on Sept. 7, 2018, just after he released his album "Swimming." His final album, entitled "Circles," was released posthumously on Jan. 17, 2020. "Swimming" and "Circles" are part of an incomplete album trilogy.
The finality of this goodbye hit me as I listened through a new Mac Miller album for the very last time. It's an experience that I have cherished since I first discovered Miller years ago. "Circles" weaves a beautiful finale, produced at the talented hands of Jon Brion. A far leap from the sound of his very first album, Miller's evolution between each release is perhaps the most magnificent evolution the industry has witnessed.
"Everybody’s gotta grow up sometime,” Miller said in a 2016 interview with The Fader. The clip, smattered with offhand jokes, provided one of the earliest deeper looks into his life. As he grew from a goofy 15-year-old with massive untapped talent to a 26-year-old expressing his battle with depression and addiction through his music, his evolution as an open-hearted, inspiring artist illustrates one of the greatest paths for up-and-coming musicians.
His early music was hailed as the “soundtrack to high school days” by many late 1990s and 2000s kids — not only did he have a relatable goofy image, but he was around the same age as his fan base. Many of his fans grew up alongside him.
Miller originally went by the name of "EZ Mac" for his first mixtape, "But My Mackin’ Ain’t Easy." His nonchalant vibe was further exemplified in the cover art for his mixtape "The High Life" and his album "K.I.D.S." While most of his early releases were classic party tracks, there were a few mellow pieces that stood out. Though these songs weren't as popular as others, they were the first suggestions of a new genre that Miller would begin to explore.
His music videos also began to rise in popularity on YouTube, just five years into the platform’s launch. The entire project fit right into his frat-rap niche, providing the perfect breakout into the music industry. The project also included Miller’s token twist; his song “Traffic in the Sky” featured the same mellow sound that was present within the stand-alone pieces of his earlier mixtapes.
He went on to release his next mixtape, "Best Day Ever," featuring fellow Pittsburgh rapper Wiz Khalifa and including his arguably most famous song, “Donald Trump.” His feud with Donald Trump following the song’s release garnered massive media attention.
Miller’s critical success came to a sudden halt after his first album release, "Blue Slide Park." Released in November 2011, it sold 144,000 copies in the first week. Yet, while the album was the first independently distributed album to top the charts since 1995, it fell dramatically the following week.
As Jordan Sargent put it harshly in an infamous Pitchfork review, “Pittsburgh rapper (Mac Miller) is mostly just a crushingly bland and intolerable version of Wiz Khalifa.” Sargent rated the album a 1.0 on a 10-point scale.
The songs fell right into his frat-boy aesthetic, proclaiming his love for women, fame, money and drugs — but the music industry was suddenly uninterested in any of that. Miller’s one redeeming quality as a musician was that his album had no features from other artists, a rare quality for a No. 1 rap album.
The failure of his initial album brought his career to an abrupt plateau. A couple of his singles from his 2012 mixtape "Macadelic" gained popularity, but otherwise, Miller’s prospects for musical fame had fallen out of sight, and Miller retreated into himself.
He became more focused on the musical beauty within his work, drawing from his life experiences to create music that felt real. Miller started producing his own music and worked with numerous collaborators, becoming a true star in LA’s rap scene. His studio was home to many major underground artists such as Earl Sweatshirt and Vince Staples. He completed an entire album under his producer alias, Larry Fisherman, with Vince Staples, entitled "Stolen Youth."
His mental health took a sudden turn as he moved from marijuana to hard drugs, which he openly rapped about on his new music. In his interview with The Fader, Miller described his dependency on drugs as stemming from his loneliness, boredom and constant need to try something new.
“Kinda just sitting there by myself all the time ... it becomes toxic," Miller said. "It started by me just sitting inside all day, and then you get bored, then you’re like ‘well, I could just be high. I could have a whole adventure in this room.’”
His wealth gave him a near-endless access to drugs — coupled with his openness to trying anything, this allowed him to continue using drugs even when he didn’t feel the need to.
In November 2012, Miller released the project "You" under his alter ego, Larry Lovestein & The Velvet Revival, in stark contrast to anything he had released previously. The project landed in the epitome of experimental, but its release was the first of many under his various alter-egos, and seemed to be the beginning of his love for jazz that saturated his 2016 masterpiece, "The Divine Feminine." "You" was by far the most creative work Miller had ever released, described as a “stunning creative flex” in a posthumous review on DJBooth.
That same year, he worked on his second studio album, "Watching Movies with the Sound Off," released in June 2013. The album was massively influenced by horror movie aesthetics and was also incredibly different from anything he had released before. It featured a cryptic and psychedelic sound — songs like “Goosebumpz” featured lyrics surrounding the rap obsession with drugs and women, laying them down to a dark and crude musical style that differentiated it from its mild counterparts.
Other songs like “Watching Movies” and “S.D.S” brought out the horror movie aesthetic that unified the unique project. The record also included tracks such as “REMember” and “Someone Like You,” which were dedicated to Miller’s late friend. The album included bonus tracks featuring up and coming artist Tyler the Creator, continuing to celebrate Miller’s indie style.
