Amidst the blowing swirl of a moonlit midnight sits perched my musical mind, poised to select another melody from which my next day’s drive to work will expand. I refer to this selection of thoughts as the Mac Miller Mixtapes because Mac was one of my first guidepoints for these “mixtape” journeys. I may walk out a long way from where I start to get through my day, but Mac is among those always there to get me home.
So for tonight and this beginning, lets open things up with this North Star from Pittsburgh. My “tape” incorporates Mac’s solo career as well as his alter egos Delusional Thomas and Larry Lovestein. There’s also a strong presence from Miller’s library of unreleased work, led by hidden song gems like Submarines, Alarm, Bump Demon and Completely Transparent. There’s also the very best from Mac solo records Swimming, Circles, The Divine Feminine, Faces and GOOD:AM. Even his appearance on NPR’s Tiny Desk segment makes a cameo in this mix, which is all about proper ebb and flow.
As a rapper Mac isn’t exactly going to rip into a bunch of slow ballads, but there’s still the right way to change tempo speeds to make a playlist really “pop”. The point of music on my drives is to make time pass steadily, so when that engaging sweet spot gets hit…. the moments just melt away.
So that’s tomorrow’s musical plan, with Tom Waits waiting in the wings as part of my next trip. Specifically Waits’ album Closing Time, which is a beautifully jazzy, poetic piece that began his career in a transcendent manner. And while a rapper like Mac Miller might seem like light years removed from Tom Waits, look no further than Mac’s jazzed, slinky Larry Lovestein project. Put on the song Love Affair, then the tie together makes perfect sense!
I’ve heard a lot of analytical voices over the years eagerly detail the expert stream-of-consciousness musical technicality rapper Mac Miller throws down on 2014 mixtape Faces. And while I’ve done plenty of previous dabbling in the then-22-year-old’s headspace on the piece, it wasn’t until the recent re-release of Faces that I thoroughly took the mixtape’s (now) 25-song journey to its completion. Both the new version as well as its original incarnation, initially made available free online.
Despite the 2021 edition’s removed samples due to rights issues and some slight instrumental changes, it still largely delivers on Miller’s tour de force of drug battles, struggles between darkness and light, and dodging in and out of the windows of a chaotic life that’d eventually result in his 2018 demise from a fentanyl-laced cocaine overdose. It’s the furthest type of album I’d have expected from Miller at one time, especially after his bright baby-faced independent pop-rap rise to stardom with 2010’s shiny-eyed K.I.D.S. and 2011’s Blue Slide Park. But I’ve had a lot to learn about Mac since falling head over heels for his final two masterful albums Swimming and Circles, and part of that included realizing he was so much more than just a half-drawn image of some Pittsburgh slack-rapper.
Here instead was a musician who ultimately preferred being sequestered in his studio (dubbed “The Sanctuary”) as he explored just how far the deep end of his talent pool truly went. Themes of girls and partying present on Miller’s earlier work quickly gave way to new stories in the chapters of his own pain, depression, love, ego and mortality; all of which are delved into on Faces.
There were some record execs at the time who felt the direction would cause his star to fade, when the truth was something much more enduring. While Miller’s Blue Slide Park persona might have quickly given way as a gimmick had he stayed on that path, what instead resulted was a fragile, expressively brilliant yet self-destructive humanity in a young man whose lightbulb simply burned out too soon. What was once derision of Miller’s origins instead simply became a question of, what might have been with more time? What might have been next after 2018?
Sadly we won’t ever know the answer. As it is, I know we were fortunate to have Mac Miller as long as we did. Even four years before his overdose death, Faces is rife with references to significant cocaine use (“Polo Jeans”, “Friends”, “Angel Dust”), fears he would “die before he detoxed”, and that his doing drugs was “just a war with boredom but its sure to get me” (“Malibu”, “Funeral”). Miller even eerily seemed to foretell how his eventual death would play out on “San Francisco”, and pondered if he’d even make it to another album with closer “Grand Finale”.
Periodically there are times in your life between the headphones of melody where a new musician in your life becomes something… more invested. Sometimes without you even realizing it’s happening and being woven into your DNA fabric. I’ve absolutely found that in Mac Miller, who utterly defied my expectations and showed me how wrong it was to put anybody’s talent in a predetermined box.
The listens (especially in later years knowing the tragedy of Mac’s story) aren’t always easy, but they’re real with warts-out honesty. And as hard and as painful as that can be to endure sometimes, it’s also often a way to create a bond over even the implication of shared experiences. Both the ups and downs in those pairings.
Faces certainly has its fair share of uncomfortable truths when it comes to what was going on in Mac Miller’s life at the time. But despite the dark paths and alleys within those narratives, Miller’s talent only continued to blossom around those gritty city streets in his mind. And that led to the creation of so much beauty within this mixtape. And within so much of his catalogue.
I wish it wasn’t the end, but he did have one hell of a gorgeous Grand Finale.
I was inspired to put on Mac Miller’s Circles album today after listening to the re-release of his heralded mixtape Faces (out on physical and digital formats now). Circles came out in a certain life period for me pre-pandemic that was a mixed bag where I needed just what that record was saying. I had chosen to leave media and was doing a different job I was having a tough road accomplishing at the time, there were many dark fall and winter days, and real or perceived I felt very isolated, aimless and out of place in my world.
Often on lunch breaks I’d just go to my car alone and quietly listen to Mac. Not drumming for sympathy, just how I preferred the menu when the pressure was off as a way to decompress. The selection was usually Circles or the equally brilliant Swimming (with some Faces and The Divine Feminine in between). Despite how real and raw that material is, it also had its comforts; often in being so easily relatable through the experience and resilience of human rising and failing. Getting up off the mat even after confessing to the mortal wound lying within one simple phrase: I’m not doing well.
Mac Miller’s Youtube Page
Miller sadly lost his fight through the darkness, but the light of what he left behind still signals to anyone struggling you aren’t alone dealing in it. Music is (or should always be) an all-inclusive playground to those hurting in ways we can and can’t identify. Kid Cudi’s Man On The Moon trilogy and Speedin Bullet 2 Heaven LP also speak bluntly on the same pains, and those works are just a drop in the bucket of creators who bare such vulnerabilities. Personally, I hope each beneficial note can aid in the spread of more honest conversations on subjects like mental health and being secure in sharing basic emotions with meaningful people in your life.
Normally OTBEOTB is a blog I keep pretty on the narrow reviewing new/indie music, but I’d also like to mix in more of my honest introspection on the overall art as well.
CourtesyKid Cudi’s Youtube
I reminisce on these moments with Mac as I’m set to be fully healthy and pain free from wrist issues for the first time in years, and with that is coming major change. I’m not exactly sure what yet, but the great thing with Mac, Cudi and every artist that matters on this level… in the digital age they’re never far from me in being any needed support. And in that, I feel some optimism. Despite the many young artists like Mac who should still be with us.
After all, great music expressing you… can make all the difference of a world’s weight.
I recently found myself introducing a significant seismic shift into the expanding universe otherwise known as my existence. Namely, by deciding to alter my circumstances and start a new job that’s far removed from my old stomping grounds in media. The decision’s involved making a lot of significant alterations to my life and has left me wondering just what this next choice of a fork in the road has in store for me in the long run.
To be honest, the further outward I travel in that regard, the more I realize there’s a lot to unpack in the hypothetical possibilities.
Those unknown pages are exciting yet somehow dizzying and terrifying all at once, and that internal struggle of feeling makes tackling the present… less than pleasant from time to time. Especially for someone who’s fought chronic anxiety for years now with varying degrees of success.
But luckily, before each fresh morning of my newly-occupied time begins, I am given a small window of a commute for music and melody to come crawling on in to keep me company. The guest stars involved in the event usually rotate quite frequently too.
For a while it was Bruce Springsteen’s 2019 solo effort Western Stars. While I didn’t make a Top 10 album list for the year just expired, The Boss certainly would have made a cameo for this one as this record thrives on one of Springsteen’s main specialties: character songs.
While my car cuts a knife through backwoods, fields and scattered homes set against a rustic terrain, it’s easy to be transported away into the world of Western Stars. For one thing, there’s its engrossing stage of lovelorn daredevils (“Drive Fast (The Stuntman)”), past-prime cowboys (“Western Stars”), and aching nostalgics (“Moonlight Motel”). There’s also Springsteen’s ever-present ability to paint a vivid audio portrait for the listener that’s about more than just the story embedded at the surface.
Inside all those actors, the 70-year old New Jersey native injects honesties that include love, loss, insecurity, the struggles of blue collar living, and plumbing the dark depths of emotional turmoil. And while I never imagined making a segue between these two artists, many of those creative adjectives are also present via another cameo of my weekday listenings: rapper Mac Miller and his 2020 work Circles.
Circles was completed by producer-at-the-helm Jon Brion and recently released following Miller’s untimely demise from an accidental drug overdose in 2018. Like Western Stars, Circles is similarly a brilliantly flawed slice of humanity, not to mention another sort of seismic shift for its creator.
When Miller first came on the scene I remember him coming off as a stereotypical white frat-boy rapper, and as a result an attraction to his work never occurred for me. My car trips with Circles have caused me to bury that presumptive judgement however, as very sadly Miller seemed ready to show us a varied, evolving vision of himself creatively that we now can only get a glimpse of.
For example, album tracks like “Everybody” and “That’s On Me” ditch the hip-hop for a touch of The Beatles filtered through Elliott Smith’s Figure 8, with Miller showing a likable capability as a vocalist. Meanwhile, the title track is a gently meditative intro that slices deep into the cartilage of the musician’s blossoming display of vulnerability. Miller also hits familiar rap signposts with “Complicated” and “Blue World”, but despite the tone shifts the album’s focus remains on looking inward no matter the darkness.
I applaud artists willing to stare into the harshest parts of the mirror, not only for the courage of revealing truths in themselves but for placing those constellations in the sky for their listeners to find too. My experience in this case may be as simple as a few moments spent in the car before a long working day, but albums like Circles and Western Stars make those daily efforts easier to handle.
That’s because artists like these and so many others openly exorcise their fears, worries and anxieties in a way that, when we connect to it, feels like it slays the demons for us a bit too. I can think of few better ways to make the busy weeks just a little bit lighter.
On The Back Edge Of The Beat 