Malcolm In The Mirror

Me
Me
Sep 9, 2018 · 7 min read

Let me just start by saying that I’m not sure how to categorize Malcolm McCormick.

That’s not to say that I need to, of course. Life and death really don’t require such a break down. Contexualizing someone else’s existence to alleviate your own existential crisis is some real self centered shit. Let that life be what it was in all it’s vagueries and pay your respect for a universe lost. After that, carry on with the knowledge that someone else no longer can. They’re not your prop, friend.

And yet. Here I go.

Truth is, I’ve never thought of Mac Miller as a white rapper. I had hardly ever even thought of him as a rapper if I’m really coming clean. Of course that guy rapped well. And this isn’t on some “I don’t see color, all rappers matter” type woke shit. He was white. He rapped. I get that. But let me work this out for a minute.

It’s just that I never really thought about it. Back in the blog days when DatPiff ran my life, Mac Miller started off as another name on the artist list in my iPod, a discography to add to my collection, an up and coming rapper who I could claim I knew before you did. Yeah, he rapped, but Blu & Exile just dropped Below The Heavens and you were never gonna tell me that K.I.D.S. was the same thing. To me, it was hip hop only in a technical sense but really, it was kiddy music. I remember there being a weird era of teenaged white rappers that, during my college years, made Hip Hop a more palatable partying soundtrack for my otherwise uncultured peers. I helped my friends like rap by letting them like Mac. He was non-threatening, to be frank. Asher Roth, Chiddy Bang, Mac Miller, Sammy Adams. I could see the allure. “Donald Trump” did go off in the frat house, but catch me solo listening to Little Brother. I’ll get back to you later.

As time flew (indeed, we were in about 2009 when all this shit happened), he and I stayed sonically in touch. Blue Slide Park felt a little too inside for me to fully relate to but I gave it a go. Every now and then he would pop up as a feature on someone’s mixtape, which, I should say, while consistently novel, was revelatory in a way that I couldn’t appreciate at the time. Read through Mac Miller’s collab list some time if you get a chance. It’s really a trophy room. It’s a bucket list. You know what that type of reach means? To be capable of such a breadth of catalog? It means you’re respected. It means you’re loved.

But let me hold up on that train of thought for a second. There’s more to unpack there later.

Look, man, I’m not better than you. I thought I had this kid figured out. I knew his ceiling, I knew his path and I honestly wasn’t really that interested in the journey. My hippity hop, backpacker egotism had Mac Miller dead to rights and fact is, unless he was capable of something breathtaking, I wasn’t that into it.

Watching Movies With The Sound Off. I’m not gonna say I loved that album. Even back then, I heard it as somewhat unpolished (wasn’t everything in that era, though?). But you ever think you know someone until they do some other shit and all of a sudden they look different? It’s like they weren’t content with the space they occupied in your brain and decided to stretch out a little. For three straight albums, Mac made me watch him grow up. He made me. The music was better, for sure, but to the more polished ear, the rapping was better, too. Mac was kickin’ shit you never saw coming. He made a lane, a lane that even in retrospect you can’t quite calibrate. A one of one lane.

See, I’ve got this friend.

My friend is good at basketball but you wouldn’t know it from looking at him. He carries himself with a confidence that, once you see him play, makes you realize that you should have known something was up the whole time. You went from paying the man no mind to having your whole opinion on judging people flipped upside down in the span of a 20 minute half. And see, playing on his team means I get to see these moments. I get to watch the shift in real time. I bet if you asked him about this, he wouldn’t even recognize it. Fact is he’s just out here doing what he does. While he was busy blowing your mind, his was split between the moment at hand and some other shit that’s happening elsewhere that he cares about more. But for me? That’s my friend and when you’re friends with someone, you have a little stake in their moments. You guys are part owners in the experience, even though it’s not yours.

So what does any of this shit have to do with Mac Miller?

I’ve never met Mac Miller. Coincidentally, that same basketball playing friend had met Mac a few times at various pop up shops or wherever cool people hang out. He always had the same shit to say about him. Mac was friendly. He took pictures. He remembered him from the last time. They even looked alike (which really only makes this parallel all the more apropos). Turns out that when you slowly start to stack up nothing but positive things to say about someone, they take on a different meaning for you. When they suprise you, when they impress you, when they make you think of themselves as individuals, things change. It’s why podcasts are so popular now. Fans of Mac aren’t just fans. Collaborators aren’t just collaborators. Remember that trophy room of mixtape appearances? You think those were all just business relationships? You think you get in all those rooms just off marketability? It’s deeper than that.

Mac Miller was a friend. A friend to people who he spent time with and a friend to people he would never meet. Mac Miller was, in a very real sense, my friend.

And I mean that in the same way that you probably do if you’re between the ages of mid 20s to 30 something. I don’t know what it is about us, man. I sometimes think that our generation is unique in that we’re stretching out our low 20s far into an age bracket where it shouldn’t be there. From the outside looking in, it has all the signs of revelry and apathy and yet, it’s quite comfortable in here. Because, you see, between all the moments of angst and fist shaking at God, many of us look around and see ourselves surrounded by people we chose to share our confusion with. Teammates. Family in a way that blood never could be.

I guess that’s why Mac was my friend. I think he felt that too. He certainly seemed to live like it.

Mac surrounded himself with people he loved and who loved him back. Literally and physically surrounded himself. I never watched his MTV show but, as I recall, the entirety of the show’s purpose was to highlight his relationships with friends since childhood and friends he’d met along the way (putting aside that “those met along the way” were the vanguard of the next generation of Hip Hop). Give me the level of fame and fortune that Mac had at 19 and my life looks a lot like his. Buy a mansion and move all your best friends in. Kick it with people that get along with those friends. Prosper together. Let everyone see how you get down.

I see myself in Mac. I really see my friends in Mac. I see his rise, his public persona and ultimately, his death in the people I love. Once the idea of Mac Miller became personally recognizable, he stopped looking like a rapper to me. He sure as hell stopped looking like a white rapper. Everytime he released music, every move he made became something more personal than a cultural addition to the zeitgeist. In the same way it was never about the basketball, it wasn’t about the music. I had a selfish attachment to the idea that my friend was so good at something that he wasn’t expected to be good at. The medium was irrelevant. It was my emotional attachment to a moment created by someone I fucked with. I was a part of something amazing. When Mac won, we all won. Really.

And now here we are again, working to figure out a way to throw a frame around a loss. Except this time, we lost our friend. We lost ourselves. We watched something from afar that could have, should have happened next door. It hurts so bad because it hurts in so many places.

But you know what, man? Mac was really amazing. What he represented was amazing. The way his life and death are making us reflect on ourselves and our friends and our family is amazing. Maybe it’s that blog era of rap, where we all knew eachother but didn’t really know each other. Maybe our emotions here are indicative of the potential to connect in ways unexpected. Maybe we can learn something from how much love Mac inspired, how wide an impact an unassuming looking kid from Pittsburgh could have, how his personal growth provided a decade long mirror for our generation to look in. Mac’s death won’t cure us but maybe it can learn us. About ourselves. About those we know and those we don’t. About the size and depth of culture. Maybe we can’t find the perfect frame but that’s the thing about an amazing life. It can’t be contained. It means too much and too many things. It gives you something, as long as you take the time to examine it. It rewires your neurons and your heartstrings. The conclusion doesn’t matter as much as the journey. Apply that to your micro as much as you do to your macro. He deserves that as much as anyone.

RIP Mac Miller. Your life was about so much more than the context of your death. You probably never knew that. Let me tell it for you.

Me

Written by

Whatever comes to mind.

Welcome to a place where words matter. On Medium, smart voices and original ideas take center stage - with no ads in sight. Watch
Follow all the topics you care about, and we’ll deliver the best stories for you to your homepage and inbox. Explore
Get unlimited access to the best stories on Medium — and support writers while you’re at it. Just $5/month. Upgrade