I wrote a first draft of this piece, and I began it with an admonishment. It seems like the only articles that get popular about Mac Miller run in one of two veins. They either have a title with some variation of “The Many Faces of Mac Miller” (how base), or they take a few paragraphs to chat about his music and then they turn into an obituary (how depressing). I made this admonishment, and within that draft, I proceeded to chat about his music for a few paragraphs before accidentally writing what, in no uncertain terms, was an obituary.
You see, I think it’s hard to write about Mac Miller without thinking about what we’ve lost. It’s hard to listen to his massive, and I mean massive, discography and imagine that this person is not still making music. Of course, a huge part of this can be attributed to Miller’s talent. He was a cultural and lyrical genius, and if you haven’t listened to any of his music, you should take a chance to do that now. But the other huge reason was more or less just because of who Mac Miller was. Let me explain.
There’s a phenomenon that happens with rappers as they grow in popularity. You catch on to a good lyricist early in their career. They rap about mansions and cars and moolah, and you think to yourself, “Wow, they’re like me. They really want the world. They’re gonna get this bag.” Fast forward a couple years, a couple hundred thousand monthly listeners, and you’re starting to think, “Wow, they’re not like me at all. They have the world. This bag is another few g’s in their bank account.” The charm starts to fade. Mac Miller skipped this phenomenon.
I mean, let’s be clear. Miller had the hundreds of thousands of monthly listeners and he was far from hesitant to rap about his bank deposits, but from the start, Mac’s music was about so much more than the mansions and the moolah. When you listen to Miller’s discography, the one thing you will know he craved more than anything else was a good life. This didn’t change from the party tracks he started with to the funk tracks he left on. I’m not sure what can be more relatable than that.
One reason I’m not big on those “Many Faces Of Mac Miller” articles is that it’s a shortsighted summation. You should understand what they’re referencing; recall the massive discography and combine that with the understanding that no two of Miller’s albums sound alike. He has party tracks, jazz, funk, psychedelic rap. He even has music that he released under the aliases of what he would call alter egos. Music he felt didn’t quite fit his main brand.
You had the disturbing depravity of Delusional Thomas. Larry Fishman was a producer. He created mixes that were unbridled in their creativity. Larry Lovestein made full on jazz music. Easy Mac dropped Miller’s first full length release ‘But Mackin Ain’t Easy’ when Miller was only fifteen — when he was youthful and idealistic, before he even performed under the name Mac Miller.
You might think to yourself, “I don’t know bro, that sounds like a lot of different faces. Look at you, with your short sighted summation.” That’s the thing. No matter the style, the genre, the age, the alter ego — it was always Mac Miller. The one thing Miller was trying to dissect no matter the “face” was this: How does someone live the best life? What does that even look like?
Let me propose some nuance here. Let’s not call them the many faces of Mac Miller. Let’s call them the many approaches of Mac Miller. The many attempts to understand what it means to live. Does it mean enlightenment? Does it mean giving in to youthful ignorance? Is it about being your best self or just letting the depravity take over?
It would take you a while to listen to Miller’s discography in full. Assuming you’ll take some breaks — you should take some breaks — it might even take a few days. In those few days of listening, I’m not really sure you would get an answer to the question. What does it mean to really live? Honestly, a track that laid that out like an instruction manual would be pretty lame.
I don’t think you’ll find that in your couple days of Mac Miller binging, though. Mac didn’t really tell you the answer. But I have one more proposal, if you’ll allow it. Though you won’t find an instruction manual for a good life within Mac’s music, if you listen carefully, you might just hear the story of someone who knew what it was like to live.