Long past the carefree party rap that laid the foundation for his career, Mac had spent the last few years mining his darkest artistic impulses this was his turn back towards the light. It’s a buzzy, jazzy backdrop, complete with a horn section breakdown designed to dance to Mac makes it all sound so fun.īreezy and open and relaxed, with a focus on live instrumentation and an improvisational atmosphere, The Divine Feminine served as a remarkably confident announcement that Mac Miller had arrived in the third act of his career (a very real tragedy after his untimely passing is that there was no indication that this third act would be his final one). It could be a heavy subject in another’s hands, but Miller (with help from co-producers Jon Brion and Pomo) chose one of the brightest beats on the album to soundtrack it.
The titular ladders are the central metaphor here, focusing on striving for new heights and taking hold of the next run as soon as you can. “Ladders” is a centerpiece, a missive that feels like bouncy thesis on the meaning of life from a person very much still figuring it out. It’s a tight effort, designed to stand as a whole, and the finest display of both his still-developing musicality and rare ability to craft songs that made listeners feel like they knew him personally. Swimming, Miller’s final album, released just last month, will stand as his best. “It’s a dark science when your friends start dying/Like how could he go? He was part lion.”
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The song sits as the first instance of Miller’s disillusionment with the bright lights of stardom: “And everybody wanna talk to me about some business shit/Never really listening, couldn’t get real interested.” But even more, “REMember” found Miller dealing with a growing awareness of his own mortality, balancing the invincibility of his younger self - “I know I’ve been the shit/All this people full of me” - and the growing shadow cast on the people he thought would be around forever.
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“REMember” is not only a dedication to his late friend, Ruben Eli Mitrani, who passed away the year before, but kicks off a series of melancholic spins (one of which we’ll get to a bit later) wherein Miller debuts his creaky, wailing singing voice. Miller’s broody sophomore album, 2013’s Watching Movies with the Sound Off, pinpoints the moment the artist’s growing musical maturity dovetailed with his developing sense of pain. Famously, this would begin a long-running feud with the now-President, a battle that Miller would take seriously (though with his characteristic tongue-in-cheek sense of humor at every turn) throughout his career. Over a bouncy, delightful sample of Sufjan Stevens’ “Vesuvius,” Miller forecasts his seemingly inevitable rise to rap stardom as he plotted to “take over the world while the haters gettin’ mad.” The raps here are facile rags to riches fodder, yet it’s the shrill delivery that, especially listening back now, stands as a reminder of Miller’s adroit ability to convey the simple joy of finally being recognized for and profiting from thousands of hours of work.
A precocious talent, Best Day Ever was Mac shedding the final vestiges of his high school life settling behind him, a graduation gift for the four years Miller committed to both school and rap. It’s a distillation of the exuberance of a backpack rap generation banking off the mid-00’s internet mixtape boom. Mac Miller’s earliest hit, from his 2011 project, Best Day Ever, is a time capsule.
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