Tag: Circles

#RushHourRap – Mac Miller – 2009

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It’s like I never felt alive before
Mhmm, I’d rather have me peace of mind than war
See me and you, we ain’t that different
I struck the fuck out and then I came back swingin’
Take my time to finish, mind my business
A life ain’t a life ’til you live it

It’s no secret that I’m a big Mac Miller fan and last week would have been his 29th birthday after passing away in 2018, which is crazy he wouldn’t have even been 30 yet. I think Mac was an artist that I related to because I was in college when he first started popping online and he was rapping about a lot of the same stuff I was doing. He was probably the most successful out of the white kid frat rap genre (Asher Roth, Sammy Adams, Chris Webby etc.) that was like a comet back in the late 2000s, but he was also the only one to really grow up and his music reflected that.

K.I.D.S. and Best Day Ever still immediately takes me back to drinking around campus and Blue Slide Park came out when I was living by myself in New York working my first real life job. (It was also the first time I owned a car with an actual CD player) Watching Movies With the Sound Off though is where Mac really started experimenting and you could see he was trying to break out of the party rapper mold, which eventually led to much more well rounded albums like GO:OD AM. He started branching out into other genres like funk and somehow successfully bending that to fit his own style like he did with The Divine Feminine before releasing arguably his best all around album Swimming, released just over a month before his death in 2018. His family and inner circle posthumously released his Circles album in 2020 as well.

But I think one of the most enduring examples of his work oddly enough was his NPR Tiny Desk Concert. I was feeling nostalgic the other day so I threw that up on YouTube and it just shows the growth Mac Miller had from his early days as he croons with a live band including one of my favorite songs of his, the melancholy ballad “2009.” There are much worse ways to spend 15 minutes of your day so I highly recommend checking it out.

#RushHourRap – Mac Miller – PA Nights

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With last week marking the two year anniversary of Mac Miller’s death I randomly heard one of his best songs on my shuffle: PA Nights. After years spent building buzz through mixtapes and YouTube music videos, Mac dropped his debut album Blue Slide Park in 2011. The album received mixed reviews, but PA Nights was a gem that offered a glimpse into the more insightful tracks he would become known for later.

Music taste is subjective so I understand people that like, love, or loathe Mac, but this was an artist that I listened to a ton in my formative years of college. He also had yet to hit mainstream so it was one of those artists that you feel sort of “in the club” with when they do finally hit it big. Then he released Blue Slide Park when I was living on my own after graduating from college and working a shit job in a state that I’d never spent more than a few hours at a time. I think thats how people form connections with music; some song or album becomes the soundtrack for a moment in your life and the two are forever fused together.

A lot of Blue Slide Park was Mac Miller appeasing the masses with the party music that was expected of him at the time. But it also sounded like a kid just trying to deal with all the changes in his life as a result of growing up.

Mac eventually got away from the frat rap that he became known for on K.I.D.S. and Best Day Ever as he made more experimental and at times depressing works like Watching Movies With the Sound Off and his legitimately soulful Swimming. And if you’re still not feeling misty eyed remembering Mac, his last album Circles was released posthumously by his family along with this note.

RIP Mac.