A (Long) Love-Letter to Larry Lovestein: A Retrospective on Mac Miller
Malcolm James McCormick, professionally known to many friends and fans as Mac Miller, was a beloved American rapper. Mac Miller broke out on the scene in 2007, age 15 but nonetheless energetic, driven and with a talent that no one could deny. On September 7th 2018, Miller died in his home in Studio City, California. His death came as a surprise and solemn sadness to many due to his unbounded talent and young age, he was just 26.
In this piece, I will go through some of my favourite Mac Miller lyrics. Hopefully, like me, we can all appreciate his gifted talent and remember the man behind the multitude of pseudonyms.
The late rapper had a bright and glowing future ahead of him, but what he left here is perhaps the most comforting gift. As a fan of his music, his death affected me in ways similar to family members passing away. I listened to Mac Miller’s music for 90% of my adolescence. His ever-changing style pushed my own growth into understanding and appreciating music. He was actually recommended to me by one of my closest friends at 14. After hearing so much of his music over the years with her already, I could finally put a name to a face.
Many songs come to mind when I think of the artist Mac Miller. Many moments too, like his Tiny Desk performance for NPR Music. He performed Small Worlds, What’s the Use? (Feat. Thundercat) and 2009 for the short concert. The stripped-back and intimate set-up allow listeners to see the care put into each song Miller created. The music he was able to give due to his talent is a tribute to his drive as an artist.
Under different pseudonyms and projects, Miller has been able to create a vast and expansive discography. One that, for all intents and purposes, lets him into the club of great artists for generations to come. His music is able to gravitate towards the smooth jazz in You as Larry Lovestein & The Velvet Revival, to the enigmatic sounds of Larry Fisherman as a producer.
Run-On Sentences, Volume Two
Also produced by Miller’s alter-ego Larry Fisherman, Run-On Sentences, Volume Two is the second beat-tape under his producer-pseudonym. Though Run-On Sentences Volume One intrigued me, I still find myself drawn to the sounds in Run-On, Vol.2 because of Smile an abstract psychedelic amalgamation of Miller’s sounds in its predecessor (Vol.1) and Faces. The song allows Miller to explore the constraints of the world and even his own perceptions of it. I think the thinly veiled fake name allowed Miller to produce in an even more creatively explosive way than the more refined and polished finish on his studio albums under his own name. This beat-tape allowed the producer side of Miller as an artist to shine and I think more people should revisit the project to hear his intricate use of sound from the instrumental songs.
“I could end it all before the mornin’
But summertime always gon’ come around, I’ll be waitin’ for another smile”
Watching Movies with the Sound Off
Favourite (if I really had to choose) tracks: I’m not real, Bird Call, Red Dot Music, Gees, REMember, Avian
Mac Miller’s life and legacy can be traced in many differing ways. I think the gift we should treasure the most from him was his music, after all, it was the thing he put his life and soul into. From his plethora of mixtapes and studio albums is the journey of a true creative, a craftsman with vision. Many cite his critically acclaimed sophomore album; Watching Movies with the Sound Off, as some of Miller’s best work. And it is. WMWTSO is so cohesive and sonically captivating that I can’t list my favourite songs. I love every song on this album (even the Deluxe tracks). It is an experience and pleasure to listen to, a true gift from the rapper proving his genius, skill and lyricism.
A favourite lyric of mine (out of many) comes from Aquarium:
“Confessions that I have and curiosity about life and death
Most of us will never understand it, we just like the quest
Read about the meaning of dreaming and all its messages
Sedatives that take me to God, witness his fetishes
We all in search for substance, that drugs you pain and numbness”
Miller’s relationship with music and its ability to express his vulnerability, state of mind, subconscious angst and personality all contribute to the diverse discography we as fans are left with. The tracks on WMWTSO are all distinctly unique from one another like Bird Call and the track following it Matches. Each one has a plethora of beautiful lines and sounds that stick with you. Long drives, late nights and when there’s nothing on your mind at all, there’s always at least one lyric from WMWTSO I can think of.
In Aquarium, he asks the listener a question:
“Will you follow me wherever my mind goes?”
And, I think the beauty of his music is we can and we do anyway before we can even answer yes.
Delusional Thomas
Favourite tracks: Halo, Labido, Bill, Grandpa Used to Carry a Flask
Miller used the Lovestein monicker to explore the different sides of himself. There’s a long history and relationship between Miller and his names, also seen through Delusional Thomas. Through self-examination, Miller was able to come up with personas to express himself, including his 2013 debut mixtape Delusional Thomas, under the alias of the same name. Released after his WMWTSO, he posted the mixtape on a spontaneously created website delusionalthomas.com (which is still up). It has a horrorcore sound and features Earl Sweatshirt among others. With a pitched up voice, Miller distorts himself on each track to explore themes of death, Christianity and delusion as well as the depths of the untapped mind through drug use. It sounds just like Mac, but, it doesn’t. This is a version of him that persists throughout all of his music. Though maybe not with the same distinctly horrifying voice. Miller speaks on visions of tar demons in the track The Jesuits and sacrificial offerings throughout.
One of the lyrics that stands out to me is from a track titled Halo:
“If Satan could accompany a halo
Then one day, maybe I could be somebody’s angel”
In all its eerie, warped distortion the tracks provide a glimpse into the darkest insights he had along with exposure to the type of experiences he had under the influence of narcotics. These musical interludes contextualise a period of heavy drug use during production and a struggle that taunted him throughout his life. The result in the EP is a twisted and murky picture of reality and a troubled mind.
K.I.D.S
Favourite tracks: Good Evening, Kool Aid & Frozen Pizza, All I Want is You, Face in The Crowd
One of my favourite songs by Miller is Kool Aid & Frozen Pizza, released in 2010. The single comes from his fourth mixtape K.I.D.S. The album and cover art are inspired by the 1995 movie of the same name, directed by Larry Clark. I think I like this song so much because of how well it fits in many of Miller’s other albums. Produced by Lord Finesse, New York producer and founding member of the D.I.T.C crew, this record is Mac Miller at his core. My favourite lyrics from this song are in the first verse:
“Waiting for the game to wanna let him in, so open up
The boy a barrel of a smoking gun
Whether I’m old or young, the chosen one
I got a hundred billion flows to come”
This era of Miller’s music tends to be summed up as his stoner rap phase, the period where he had an abundance of talent and tried his hand at a lot of places to find a home for it. Similar to tracks like Nikes on My Feet, and Face in The Crowd, Miller’s roots can be traced to this mixtape, the energetic bounce to his flow and his braggadocious lyrics have a cheeky charm to them. Though some long-time fans want to reject his explorative introductions to different genres in favour of this, I think this version of Mac Miller only highlights how much he evolved as an artist. Every time I listen to K.I.D.S, I feel like I’m in the backseat of my dad’s car driving down a dual-carrigeway.
Face in the Crowd also has one lyric that chokes me up whenever I hear it:
“Got talent, imagine what I’ll do with some time”
Faces
Favourite tracks: Therapy, Friends, New Faces, Polo Jeans, Ave Maria
The first full project by Mac Miller that I’d heard was Faces, his eleventh mixtape. Released in May of 2014, the hip-hop project has been regarded by many fans as an excellent piece of Miller’s creativity, and ability to blend different genres of music and painful subject matter together. The sound and dark undertones throughout the 24 tracks merge perfectly culminating in Grand Finale. This earned the project’s comparisons to Miller’s WMWTSO.
An incredible experience that takes the listener through the subsets of Miller’s own mind, the neo-psychedelic sound is both jarring and fitting. The features on the project eventuate the collaborative sounds that Miller was privy to. With the likes of ScHoolboy Q and Ab-Soul, Earl Sweatshirt, Rick Ross, Mike Jones, and Long Beach native Vince Staples, among other members of Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE). The mixtape in my eyes is inseparably akin to the struggling artist, a perfect outlay of all the troubling tribulations life offers. Regarded to as the “heart of his career” by Billboard writer Josh Glicksman. The mixtape recorded in the “dingy space” of his home studio did give birth to a surrealist look and “unguarded point of entry into Miller’s life.”
By retrospectively looking back at Faces as a project, the lyrics and essence of Miller’s life at the time can be heard through it. This is the same for most of his work since it’s so varied. Though, unlike any of his other albums, Faces holds with it the aura of Miller’s work ethic and approach to life: being free. The mixtape was produced in The Sanctuary, the name he gave to the windowless room where he made an extensive amount of his music.
“But surveying the Faces era shouldn’t be a morbid hunt for clues. Instead, it should be an opportunity to appreciate a defining chapter in his life. He bared his soul for all to see, creating an avenue for the listener to grow and feel vulnerable alongside him, be it his friends listening in at The Sanctuary or a fan with a set of headphones.”
Two years removed from his death, it feels strange to revisit this project of his. The experience of listening to his voice speaking on issues such as therapy, death and displacement is a sobering one. In this album, I think Miller grapples with the complexities of living, losing and gaining yourself through a barrage of experiences and issues. The production mainly falls under Miller himself, using one of his more popular pseudonyms Larry Fisherman. This alter-ego of Miller’s has contributed to producing multiple songs for himself, and other TDE members such as SZA’s Warm Winds featuring Isaiah Rashad, and The End Is Near by frequent collaborator Ab-Soul.
Friends, featuring Schoolboy Q, feels like you’re sitting in the studio with Miller and the Most Dope group as they work. Hinting towards lines form the track Colours and Shapes, the psychedelia sounds come through in the repetition of “Mac Miller, Miller Mac” until the words become unrecognisable. The song is a testament to how drugs can distort the world along with one’s version of it. It also contains one of my favourite lines for this reason:
“Swear I’m not alive, I couldn’t tell you if we ever are”
You
Favourite tracks: Suspicions, Love Affair, A Moment For Jazz
You is the 2012 EP released by Miller under the name Larry Lovestein. It was through this project I had discovered a new love for his music and a fond rekindling of love towards the genre of Jazz. In the short 5 track project, Miller divulges into a symphony of mesmerising jazz music. The way he uses his voice changes too, being more in line with singing rather than rapping. I, being fond of multi-faceted and experimental rappers such as Childish Gambino, loved the shift in his style and voice for these songs. Written and produced entirely by Miller this unfiltered jazz EP highlights his creative experimentalism and flair for the avant-garde. It’s this project that gave me a whole newfound love for Miller and his music.
In this EP, Miller wraps the listener in the comfort of love and its abundance of warm shielding sounds. My favourite song from the project is A Moment For Jazz, which features no vocals from Miller at all. Along with the dreaminess of Suspicions, both tracks have a brilliant elegance to them, decadent and timeless as music pieces. However, my favourite lyric comes from the very first lines of Love Affair:
“Darling, I been waiting in the cold
Holding this umbrella for you
The raindrops make me feel romantic”
Circles
Favourite tracks: Once A Day, Right, I Can See, Woods
Though this is actually my least favourite album by Miller, I think the overall project has a forward-looking motif to it. The posthumous album brings tears to my eyes every time I dare to listen to it, but not because of his death. The album feels like its saying goodbye. It feels as though every track has sorrow seeping through the layers of blissful hazy 70’s sounds. Pitchfork writer Sheldon Pierce dubs it an “optimistic epilogue”. I have to agree that this is the perfect way to describe the flow and tone of the album.
The direction of Circles’ sound directly opposes that of Swimming, but they feel connected anyway. The bright, sunshine-y tunes in Circles offer a cheery outlook to the introspective lows in Swimming. Tracks such as I Can See illuminate rather than shadow Miller’s own psyche and open it up to its fullest vibrant capacity. Every song feels fresh, most likely due to the soft-rock pop and neo-soul sounds throughout. It’s difficult to truly understand and encapsulate probably since Miller couldn’t complete the project to his fullest artistic vision.
Though one particular song that comes to mind immediately that, I think, offers a good place to star is Woods. The song takes us on the journey out of the woods of a broken relationship:
“I make this planet feel like home
It’s us versus time, the door is closing
So far beyond all our control”
The Divine Feminine
Favourite tracks: Soulmate, Planet God Damn, We, Cinderella, Congratulations
Personally, this album is one of Miller’s most interesting projects. More than anything I think The Divine Feminine is love itself. Love in all its esoteric and ancient forms. The tracks delicatley trace the sound of falling in love and being in love. His fourth commercial full-length album takes a dive into exploring his intimate feelings and understandings of women. Many musings come from this project different from the usual laments that give depth to his lyricism and writing style previously.
This album quickly followed the release of his third studio album GO:OD AM the previous year. GO:OD AM is a vibrant, adventurous record with a charismatic energy that snapped many of his listeners awake, and ushered in a new demographic of fans outside of fans of his “stoner rap” sound. On the other hand, The Divine Feminine doesn’t feel like an album “a rapper” would make at all. Although, it definitely feels like an album Mac Miller would. From the inharmoniously sybaritic moans that play at the end of Stay, to the mentions of sex throughout this album is tied to Miller’s previous explorations of sex and the feminine. I think its one that stands out to me in his discography because of its care and attention to sensual detail. From the opening of Soulmate that starts with a monologue from the film Good Will Hunting:
“You feel like you’re alone, Will? You have a soulmate? Somebody who challenges you. I’m talking about someone who opens up things for you — touches your soul. You can’t give back to them, you know. You’ll never have that kind of relationship in a world where you’re always afraid to take the first step because all you see is every negative thing 10 miles down the road. But you can do anything you want, you are bound by nothing…”
“When I’m with you, what do you do? Bring me to life”
Soulmate is perhaps my favourite song on The Devine Feminine, it’s explorative, thought-provoking and heartfelt. Produced by Mister Neek & DāM FunK. The deep questioning of love and its purpose offer critiques to how we view ourselves. The song toys with the idea of love being otherworldly and magical, angelic in many respects as opposed to the rest of life.
“You think you a God ’til you run out of time”
Miller’s previous records places him within worldly ideas and surrounded by earthly vices, this track frames love as the highest form of divinity and enlightenment. Throughout the album, Miller positions himself as an observer to love and how it interacts with the world, people, and even himself. The electronic funk song focuses on the constraints of thinking entirely as a lone person in the world, not as someone who attributes their life to love and its endeavours.
“Are you happy with your life?
Can I come and satisfy? Open up, let me inside”
The album features an abundance of creatives that fit this sound well such as CeeLo Green, Bilal, Njomza, and Ariana Grande. The artists and songs he decided to select on the finalised project give way to a smooth melodic unravelling of Miller’s emotions through relationships. Each track glides into the next and provides an insight into Miller’s own feelings throughout that move from doting and affectionate, to passionate and intense. Miller oscillates between the aromatic and overwhelming emotions of lust, love and adoration on this record to sweep the listener into his mental state while he’s in love.
The sultry jazz allows the album to take hold of the senses as you listen. Every second appeals to sensory overload and bursts with a type of quelled fluorescence to it. Along with Miller’s softer sounding voice, the subdued nature of the overall record delves into a new subset of feelings and sensations. Another favourite of mine featured on the album is Planet God Damn as it transports you in a space-like drift through love. It really can feel like you’re on a different planet when you’re in love and the song perfectly captures that estranged experience realising how love can do that to you. Planet God Damn, produced by Vinylz & Frank Dukes, sits within my top 3 favourite songs by Miller. The lyrics are spunky and immersive as always. Njomza, an artist Miller signed to his label REMember Music, accompanies him on this track. Both their vocals blend perfectly together, creating a similarly dreamlike experience of funk and pop as Soulmate.
Though this “standout” track allows both Njomza and Miller to speak to each other. Their entangled voices tease out the dizzying sensations of love and make for a compelling narrative to follow and immerse yourself within. The track overall provides differing perspectives on what love feels and sounds like:
“Feelin’ like how the fuck did
We get into a place we ain’t accustomed to lovin’ inside of”
Miller laments the state of his relationship in the nostalgic song, referencing the dissent into an unhappy and unloving territory unfamiliar to the subject of the song. Planet God Damn takes you through a dreamy soundscape against the questioning in the lyrics. However, it seems like in this particular relationship Miller was ready to settle down and bypass the troubles present for a happy life. The song details that there are glaring problems like outgrown life paths of adolescence that he dubs “changin direction”.
Njomza’s lyrics in the outro along with Miller’s play out the song’s refrain. The end effortlessly communicates the mystifying need to be with the person one more time out of nostalgia:
“Wanna feel you feel me”
Swimming
Favourite tracks: Dunno, Self Care, Hurt Feelings, Come Back to Earth, Jet Fuel
At last, we have reached my favourite project; Swimming. Or as I would put it; Mac Miller’s magnum opus. Revisiting it after the other projects truly re-affirms (in my mind) that this is Miller at his best. The cover art spurred fans on Reddit to theorise it is a culmination and homage to of all his previous albums. The album feels injected with humility. There’s a weighted presence that is only magnified with the knowledge that he would pass away only a few short weeks after its release. The album in every sense feels like Miller is solidifying his stance in music and allowing motifs previously explored to push past the barriers of self-criticism and external validation. Hurt Feelings, for example, feels like an ode to the “Old” Mac Miller. It seems directly inspired by his previous adventures into funk and psychedelic music.
2009 is perhaps the most profound song of his I’ve ever heard. Akin to the likes of REMember — a grief-filled song (from WMWTSO) that showcases Miller’s maturity as a lyricist, it feels incredibly personal. Like REM (stylised to honour his late friend Reuben Eli Mitrani) 2009 is deeply personal. In this track, produced by Eric G, Miller lays himself bare. I think this is the ending of the album. His entire career, before the release of K.I.D.S, to this album is iterated through this song. I see So It Goes as punctuation to what’s left behind in 2009’s outro as if it closes the sentence but leaves the album itself open. 2009 marks Miller’s journey as an artist and his growth as a person. He voices his life choices and regrets, explored in Jet Fuel and Dunno, but chooses to look toward the future.
“Nowadays all I do is shine, take a breath and ease my mind”
Eric G spoke on the process of producign the track during Miller’s The Divine Feminine tour:
“That’s what’s really crazy about working with him, too, is that he will sit down and play piano. Then he’ll play guitar, then he’ll play bass. He’ll play drums. Everything! The studio we were at, they had a big audio room, and he just played drums in there all crazy and came back in the room and played piano. It’s just insane. I think a lot of people think he’s just a rapper, which is fine, but he’s multi-talented. It’s just fluid. He just kind of exists, going with it. Instead of overthinking anything, he just goes. That speaks a lot to people’s talent, too. Not even a second thought. He just always did. Right off his first thought and instinct.”
I think this song (like another interesting song Conversations Pt. 1) is the result of years of introspection and meditation. The world and all its pressures especially on celebrities under constant limelight are discarded away by Miller. It seems as if he found serenity in his life though it is eerily close to his passing. I believe it only emphasises the message of the song; to be comfortable with yourself as anything can happen.
The chorus of 2009, to me, is what I think of now when hearing the name Mac Miller and how I want to remember him:
“I ain’t askin’ “Why?” no more
Oh, no, I take it if it’s mine, I don’t stay inside the lines
It ain’t 2009 no more
Yeah, I know what’s behind that door”
There will never be another artist like Mac Miller. His music was innovative, bombastic and imbued with a dark spirit that can’t be matched by any other. The artful and ingenious lyrics and experimental production within his discography are unique to Miller. Though there may not be a conducive way to truly encapsulate every part of his artistic aesthetic in an article, at least we can remember some truly insightful lyrics and moments from his discography.
Rest, Easy Mac. Rest easy indeed.
