10 essential songs from Mac Miller – Rolling Stone



[ad_1]

In his last interview, published on Vulture just one day before his death, Mac Miller gave unintentional advice on how best to honor him: "The people who have the best chance to know me, who would like to do it, said that the 26-year-old rapper listening to my music. And while his later music was developing a complicated alchemy of sorrow and clear descriptions of addiction, it's not necessary to look at his catalog to hear the sweetness that characterizes the Pittsburgh rapper's career. In the late 2000s, in the late 2000s, at the release of his film "EZ Mac with the old rap" Swimming Earlier this year, Miller's discography portrays a complete artist who has created records that bleed with sincerity.

Miller's career has had several acts. In his final stages, after starting to shed the careless image and work of his character and becoming an experimenter, he became an accomplished artist. Some of his best work, especially Swimming, are better taken as a whole. But, to get an idea of ​​what he has changed over the course of his career, and to get a glimpse of why he was so loved by such a diverse audience, it's important to take a sample of all the times of his varied career. So, for both newcomers and longtime fans, we've put together a (non-chronological) mix of his best-known and most obscure pieces to try to present Mac to those who have not had the opportunity to listen to him during his stay. still there.

"Donald Trump" (2011)

The first success of Mac Miller, his 2011 project, Best day of my life, is a time capsule. This is the exuberance of the backpack rap generation that marked the mid-year Internet mixtape boom. Early talent, Best day of my life Mac abandoned the last vestiges of his high school life, a graduation gift for Miller's four years in school and rap. On a nice sample of Sufjan Stevens' "Vesuvius", Miller predicts that his seemingly inescapable rise to rap's fame will lead him to "seize the world while the haters go crazy." yet, it 's the strident delivery that, especially while listening now, recalls Miller' s deft ability to convey the simple joy of finally being recognized and enjoying thousands of hours of work. Famous, this was going to start a long-standing quarrel with the current president, a battle that Miller was going to take seriously (albeit with his characteristic sense of humor every moment) throughout his career.

"REMember" (2013)

The sophomore album of Miller, 2013 Watching movies with the sound off, identifies the moment when the growing musical maturity of the artist coincides with his growing sense of pain. "REMember" is not just a dedication to his late friend, Ruben Eli Mitrani, who died the year before, but launches a series of melancholic throws (which we'll be talking about later) in which Miller makes his debut, screaming singing voice. The song presents itself as the first example of Miller's disillusionment with the brilliant lights of fame: "And everyone wants to talk bullshit / Never really listen, I could not be really interested." coping with a growing awareness of his own mortality, balancing the invincibility of his young self – "I know I've been shit / All these people full of me" – and the l & rsquo; growing shadow focused on the people who thought to be around forever. "When your friends start to die, it's a dark science. How could he go? He was partly a lion.

"Scales" (2018)

SwimmingMiller's latest album, released last month, will be his best. It is a tight effort, designed to hold as a whole, and the most beautiful demonstration of both its still developing musicality and its rare ability to create songs that made listeners feel personally acquainted with it. The "ladders" are a centerpiece, a missive that resembles a bouncing thesis on the meaning of the life of a person who still understands it. The titular ladders are the central metaphor here, focusing on finding new heights and taking control of the next race as soon as possible. It could be a heavy subject in the hands of the other, but Miller (with the help of co-producers Jon Brion and Pomo) chose one of the brightest rhythms on the album to follow him. It is a buzzing, jazzy backdrop, complemented by a section of horn designed to dance; Mac makes all that fun.

"We f / Cee-Lo Green" (2016)

Breezy and open and relaxed, with a focus on live instrumentation and an atmosphere of improvisation, The divine feminine was a remarkably confident announcement that Mac Miller had arrived at the third act of his career (a very real tragedy after his untimely death: there was no indication that this third act would be his last act). Long after the carefree party rap that laid the foundation for his career, Mac had spent the past few years exploiting his darkest artistic impulses; it was his return to the light. "We", which allows Cee-Lo to appear as an ethereal presence at the three-quarter mark before "exclaiming" You must face Mac Miller, bitchhhh"With a laugh off the track, is a piece of laconic composition with confidence.Today, Miller had learned to let the songs grow, breathe and enjoy the kind of song you could keep repeating, rather than to deploy his always sharp writing in bursts, which was one of the best examples of this concretization.

"Kool Aid & Frozen Pizza" (2010)

The chorus of hip-hop artists who paid tribute to Miller's work after his death Friday should not be a surprise: the rapper and producer expressed a deep love for heroes and the history of culture, both in his job considering a platform. By returning Lord Finesse's "Hip 2 Da Game" without regurgitating the flow or news of the latter at the age of 18, Miller paid tribute to the genre while remaining in his own way. Although many people are embarrassed by his desire to touch a classic, Miller would eventually win many of his critics by always striving to improve (and know what he was talking about). The song, another of his early successes, begins with a worn hit and horns signaling an appreciation of dusty encryption sessions at the lunch table while we were only "muhfuckin KIDS". The resume later, "Kool Aid & Frozen Pizza" was Miller to his most accessible and inspiring teenagers to continue to develop their own aspirations by rapping at their level: "I live a life very similar to yours.

"Planet god f / njomza" (2016)

The divine feminine found Mac Miller unusually happy. After three years and three albums in the shadows, the first joy of Miller was finally found. Miller's sound changes – familiar rap samples and live instrument breakbeats – reflected a changing environment. After moving to LA and hooking up with artists such as Odd Future's Earl Sweatshirt and Long Beach rap virtuoso Vince Staples, he began a new artistic journey from the rhythm scene to live instrumentation. . Alongside Njomza, a colleague of the REMember label, the song embodies Miller, who is heartbroken ("I think I'm stuck in nostalgia / my mind is when this love was so divine"), but bends hope imagining lying on the beach with her lover, feeding each other with grapes. Even in his romantic position, Miller stands outside of the industry; apart from his deadly culture of abuse. In an ideal world, "we could leave the whole game, make real estate, that's how we did it". Love has always been the solvent, even when abandoning it.

"Weekend f / Miguel" (2015)

One of his biggest hits, "Weekend" is a real charmer. A sparkling drumset and dazzling strings with a dance rhythm that went straight to hip-hop on the charts in 2015. In many ways, it's a return to the subject on which Mac has built his career – his thesis is essentially that the weekend is the time to party, and that's when Mac comes to life. However, at this point, far from the carefree first days of his adolescence, there are regrets in hedonism. "I had trouble sleeping, fighting these demons / I wonder what's the thing that makes me breathe / Is it money, celebrity or neither?" The song is more accomplished than Miller's proof that he could still please at will), but the edges had begun to curl, regrets were forming and Mac was aware of everything.

"S.D.S." (2013)

When Mac Miller relaxes in "SDS" – something that does something – the interaction of bass and kickdrum between space and space, it's hard to say that this kid has no certifiable rap steez. He spits along the growing rhythm of the synthesizer, bounces off the turn of the sentence and refers himself to his own progress as an artist: "I'm amazed, this puzzle is incomplete / I'm just an idea, nothing concrete. Although obviously nervous about never placing the final piece of the puzzle, he was still honestly honest and jovial counterintuitive, making his mortality a triumph of humor: turn me to a icon / Search the world for Zion or a shoulder I can cry on / The best of all time, I'm Dylan, Dylan, Dylan, Dylan. SDS was at once a call to the outside world its purpose clearly: "We are here to reinvent the music, it's time to make the revolution / I'm dying of hope for the movement, trying not to lose it".

"Aquarium" (2013)

The discretion of the listener is advised: only play if you are ready to release a tear or two. "Aquarium" re-engages Miller's soft-spoken tenor previously featured on "REMember" on To watch movies and displays a similar naked interiority. Sampling of Tune-Yards' "Powa" song, of gloomy color, questions the pitfalls and implications of celebrity – a subject on which he would return Swimming – with an ambivalence of cut. Miller turns his gaze upward and outward, criticizing the way we "make assumptions about how to monetize and enjoy all the time we take, getting lost in this aquarium." we start to have glimpses into Why the drugs had become a crutch in the first place: "Sedatives that bring me to God / testify to his fetishes / We are all in search of substance, drugs and numbness". As if the lifestyle of celebrities psychology, he predicts his slow takeover: "I would like to be able to tell you that I have not seen it come / But I'm ready for everything to finish, die before the trend of tomorrow.

"Return to Earth" (2018)

"My regrets look like texts I should not send," Mac opens "Return to Earth" and Swimming, his last album. The song, now difficult to listen to, is the best example of the simple and straightforward way in which he was able to expose exactly what he was going through to the record. Here he deploys as it is difficult for him to just be: "I just need to get out of my head," says the chorus. But in typical Mac mode, the song is not a dark diary. Instead, it's one of the lightest inputs to Swimming, and the darkness soon breaks down: "I was drowning, but now I'm swimming." He is undeniably convinced that things will be better and that it is incredibly tragic to listen to him today.

[ad_2]
Source link