Mac Miller

Josh Kindl
Sep 8, 2018 · 5 min read

The year is 2010, I’m 14 years old. After an early adolescence which featured experimentation with just about every cliche subculture a white boy can be a part of, I had began settling in to the person I would ultimately end up being. I’ve always been obsessive over weird shit. When I was 7 I watched and re-watched old Mel Brooks comedies with my grandfather, learning lines off by heart trying to be a pre-pubescent Leslie Nielson. When I was 10, I skateboarded with my friends and listened to way too much alt and punk rock, arguing about the merits of The White Stripes, Misfits and, of course, Eminem. When I was 12, I was playing right back for the best under-13 club soccer team in Northwest Sydney (when I wasn’t reading the Twilight Saga). By the time I was a “teenager” I was a weird, dichotomous, self-confident little boy, who read old Robert Christgau reviews and talked shit and played Halo.

You can imagine then what kind of reception Blue Slide Park, the smash debut success of previously underground Mac Miller, had in my young head. I hated it. It was ‘frat rap’ or a ‘Slim Shady knockoff’ or, most heinously of all, ‘pop.’ The little music snob in me hated it and hated Miller even more because all my friends listened to it. Someone at school would be playing ‘Party on Fifth Ave’ and I was the kid who would scoff incredulously, “haven’t you guys ever heard of Gangstarr?!”

But just as I evolved as a person from those days of young, uneducated and unearned snobbery, so too did Miller evolve as an artist. His second album, Watching Movies with the Sound Off, came out three years later, when I was 17. It was hardly an It Was Written level follow up, but it was better. I’d discovered Odd Future by then, who’s style and ethos was creating a new kind of Hip-Hop star, I was doing pretty well with a new group of friends than those I’d grown up with, and I was significantly less sexually frustrated. I wanted to learn, I wanted to like things. I’d let go of my hatred for Miller and for other artists like him. Did I think his sophomore effort was game changing? No. Did I hate it? No. Mac was fine; he was “Easy Mac with the Cheesy Wraps.”

Please also note that I said ‘artist’ when talking about Miller and not ‘rapper’. It’s an important distinction, at least for me anyway. Mac was always a rapper, and a great one at that, but he was also more creative than his battle rap background would have predicted. When Mass Appeal used to do their ‘Rhythm Roulette’ series, wherein a producer would pick three records at random and then make a beat out of them, Miller was the only one who seemed genuinely excited to be there. He chuckles his way through a selection of old LP’s and in his first piece de camera nervously admits “I actually asked to do this,” with a sly grin and a cheeky giggle. He was that kind of musician. He wasn’t too good for so-called ‘gimmicks,’ he revelled in them and managed to make some dope shit while doing it.

Miller became important in my musical life in 2015 with GO:OD AM, his third album. I hadn’t really kept up with the mixtapes and the alter-ego’s, there was way too much of that going on back then, but I was excited for a finished product. It turned out to be the best, most revealing and most heartbreaking work of his career. It was as solid and as good as an album could be without being great, which is not an insult. Mac was always the best rapper who was destined never to be talked about in twenty years, the guy old-heads would one day reference when talking about the post-bling, pre-mumble days. On AM, he showcased a talent for sound, pace and flow that made the whole product endlessly re-listenable. Chief Keef never sounded as good as he did on ‘Cut The Check’ (Shit made me go woo like Rick Florer/ I mean Rick Flair bitch boy I've been player) and hasn’t topped it since. Tracks like “100 Grandkids” got the blessing of Diddy, for god sake. It was an artistic triumph for Miller and one that I fell in love with. It’s the album that made me go and buy The Divine Feminine and Swimming on CD the day they came out.

Re-listening to GO:OD AM after I heard Miller had died, at 26, was hard. The pain that used to sit underneath his playful exuberance, like a younger brother watching the eldest play a video game, now sits front in centre. The de-facto opener, ‘Brand Name’, makes perhaps the most self-aware and shattering declaration of Millers career (To anyone who sells me drugs/ don’t mix it with that bullshit/ I’m hoping not to join the 27 club). He knew he was fucked up, he knew he had faults. He didn’t pretend to be better than his demons and didn’t try to convince an adoring public he could live without them. It was the small victories where Mac Miller made his living. In The Fader’s documentary on him, he explained that he didn’t want or need to achieve total sobriety to be happy. He was just happy to “not be fucked up right now.”

When I think about Mac now, after eight years of my life spent listening to his music, I can’t help but be drawn back to my stupid 14 year old self. The one that hated Mac Miller. Because deep down, I knew that I was him. I was young, confused, emotional and excited about everything. Mac figured out who he was earlier than he had any right to and was rightly respected industry-wide for it. He lived for himself and his art was an extension of that. In ‘Doors’, the opening track of GO:OD AM, Mac sings sleepily to the listener. He’s at once confident (ain’t saying that i’m sober/ i’m just in a better place), silly (i’m on my way over/ i’m just running kind of late) and wise beyond his years. When he half-raps, half-sings ‘one day you’ll go, right now you’re here/ don’t leave just yet, don’t disappear’ he’s at once afraid and content. He admits to you that this can’t last forever. He tells himself to enjoy it while he can. I just wish the ride was longer.

Josh Kindl

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