A contemplation and reflection on Mac's life, death and legacy

I was trying to explain Mac Miller to my boss earlier today, and he was- gratefully – willing to listen to me ramble through the honest truth of my Mac fandom. I tried to explain that Mac didn’t have the cultural impact of Kurt Cobain, but was similar in that they were young and struggled with mental health and worldly vices. In the end, it might’ve been the drugs and the lifestyle that took them out- but mystery seems to surround their sad and untimely deaths. Why would such bright and promising artists escape life so young? I told my boss they had more music in them, it seems.. but then again I don’t know. And I don’t really care for Mac’s final projects: Swimming, and the posthumous Circles. I had a hard time articulating why, and I loosely rapped on the idea that Mac was a true lover of hip hop and his later projects deviated so much. They just weren’t his best- hip hop was Mac’s bag. So tonight I’m sitting here listening to a mix generated by my current streaming platform- Musi- and let a few songs from Swimming play. I usually skip them because I can hardly bear to listen, and I just realized why: it feels like Mac is saying goodbye to the world on the last two projects. 

Ascension

What I wish I could’ve iterated to my boss was this: Mac was a happy, fun-loving, optimistic kid with big dreams and ambition to share his light with the world through music. You can hear it all through his first projects- he’s ready to shoot up to the top. And he quickly ascends, becoming an addict in the process. His vices are those typical of rappers, but what made Mac different was that he wasn’t shy about sharing what was going on through his music. He frequently wrote about his lows and his highs, encompassing the reality of being a superstar who, at the same time, wasn’t exactly permeating mainstream. Even now that I feel like I can say his name and people have a vague awareness of him, I don’t think people really know him. And you may be thinking, “well you certainly didn’t know him Des.” But I did. I feel like all his true fans knew him- he tells you exactly who he is through his music. 

“Party like it’s the last day..”

I put it to my boss like this: when Mac Miller died, we felt like we lost a friend. It hit home. We hurt. I remember the day he died, my best friend and I sat in the car and smoked a blunt listening to Mac’s song “Funeral” (on the hook he says “This the last day of my life”) and the reality set in that Mac had been preparing us for this moment all along. We knew it was coming; he spoke it before it happened. He “joked” about overdosing and dying alone or just “getting up outta here”, as one old friend put it. 

“It feels like Mac is saying goodbye to the world on the last two projects.”

So I still find it difficult to listen to his last two albums, but I feel more peace in finally understanding why. I can sense the air of him making peace with the world before he exits, giving us all that he has left- his honest, unfiltered, handcrafted art. And that’s what makes Mac underrated and under-appreciated, but it’s no thing if you don’t know. For those of us who do, and those who will one day discover, Mac did exactly what he was supposed to do on this planet. He gave us pure, potent art. The most honest expression of how he felt at the time. 

Rap Diablo

He was a true artist, musician, rapper, and student of music. I told my mom this to describe Mac’s approach to rapping: the other day I saw on the internet that we have between 60,000-80,000 thoughts per day. Mac would put as many of those thoughts as he could into his raps and songs; he never ran out of things to make music about. He could string together a line of thoughts that defy logic but follow a natural stream of consciousness.. if you actually had enough time in the day to think about stuff other than getting to the next moment. If you had time to let your mind wander and explore, if your bills were paid and you did a certain amount of drugs… well, that’s kinda what Mac was. He made a living off of being an artist, and it fueled the endless creativity that exists within each of us that few really get to tap into.

I can still remember the first moments I heard various Mac songs. The time, the place, the people, what was happening in my life. And no matter what, I look back on those moments fondly because his music helped me get through whatever it was, in one way or another.

Inflection Points

It’s funny, the other day I dreamt about the old friend who first introduced me to “Friends” from Mac’s (imo, magnum opus) mixtape “Faces.” It was a gray cloudy day (irl, not the dream), and I was riding with him and another friend to go downtown or something.. I think Cam was getting gas and I was waiting in the car when it came on. My world kind of shifted as I processed this new thing- and from there I dove deeper into his catalog. Before that, another friend had introduced me to his project The Divine Feminine, a jazzy rap album about love, and I fell in love with it in college. Now the two vibes are very different, but very dope- and that’s what caught me. You mean this guy makes this kind of music AND that kind of music? When Mac wanted to explore a new musical lane he did so whole-heartedly. Maybe Mac gave too much of himself to craft at minimum one project per year for something like 10 years of his active career (which spans his teens to his mid twenties when he passed away). Maybe that’s what it takes sometimes. That sounds very dark, but people ought to at least begin to understand- being an artist is hard. Being an artist on a global scale is exponentially hard, and some people die in the process. We’re only beginning to make mental health an open conversation, but for years famous people didn’t have the luxury of “it’s ok not to be ok.” I can go on about that, but I’ll save that conversation for another day. For now I’ll make the point I’ve been reiterating for years now, because I’ll forever be an advocate for the mental health of famous people. Being famous is not normal, and we should be considerate of people. Famous people are people too. Super human, not as in superhuman.

Love. Mac.

The issues of death belong to God. But I think Mac sensed he was on his way out of this world. The tone of peaceful acceptance on those final tracks is disconcerting, and at the same time consoling. It’s some multidimensional music stuff that I don’t understand. Beautiful and otherworldly. I’ll always appreciate what he did during his short life, that will impact us for generations to come. Whether you know it or not.