“When you’re young, not much matters. When you find something you care about, then that’s all you got. When you go to sleep at night you dream of [MUSIC]. When you wake up it’s the same thing. It’s there in your face. You can’t escape it. Sometimes when you’re young, the only place to go is inside. That’s just it. [MUSIC] is what I love. Take that away from me and I really got nothing.”

 

K.I.D.S. came out my freshman year of high school. I was late to social media, so in 2010-11 I didn’t have a Twitter or even Facebook. With the amount of new artists and music we find and share online these days, the proliferation of K.I.D.S. pre-social media is a fascinating retrospective. I remember Mac as one of the first “backpack rappers” our age that everyone was talking about at school, passing headphones around and downloading online. In the era of industry titans like a rising Young Money, Rick Ross, Kanye, etc. running our iPods, Mac was a breath of relatable air. Yes, there were guys like J. Cole, Kid Cudi, and Wiz Khalifa who had gotten popular off of mixtapes (with maybe a big name cosign or two), but they were all 10+ years older than us. Mac Miller was us. He was a regular teenager, from a somewhat unremarkable city, not particularly rich or poor, but with an undeniable love for this culture so many of us have grown up in. Oh, and did I mention he could RAP?

K.I.D.S. had so many hits. Outside, Senior Skip Day, Good Evening, Knock Knock, Kool Aid & Frozen Pizza, the list goes on. Mac was doing everything we were, and living the life we dreamed of as a high school kid ‘making it’ rapping. “Nikes on my feet keep my cypher complete” would get thrown into all my freestyles with my friends, when I’d be searching for the next topic or punchline and happened to look down at my shoes. I didn’t even know at the time I was quoting a sample of a Q-tip remix of a bar from what would become one of my favorite Nas songs. When Best Day Ever came out right after, we saw him step up his production with heavy hitters like Just Blaze and 9^th Wonder, getting features from Wiz Khalifa and Phonte (North Carolina legend!). We also saw the beginnings of Mac Miller singing, which I’ve always loved; the way he wasn’t always on tune or didn’t have the broadest range, but still avoided any substantial vocal editing or tuning. It kept to his seemingly unconscious brand of raw authenticity. An authenticity I thought got away from him on his no. 1 debut album Blue Slide Park, and felt a bit distanced from Mac. When I spun Macadelic, I really enjoyed the music but wasn’t sure who he had become. I was perhaps too young, or naïve, to understand what he was going through and just assumed he had moved on to a level of fame with a lifestyle that wasn’t quite relatable anymore.

Three years later, I was a sophomore in college. I had undergone some pain and growth in the intervening time, moving 500 miles away from home at 18, trying to figure out who I was and what direction to go; and largely failing. My life had gotten much more complicated and busier and… I stopped checking in. I had seen Mac Miller had a TV show, heard about his crazy party mansion, and assumed that was the end of that. (It wasn’t. Mac, as always, had been in the studio opening doors for my favorite young artists like Vince Staples, The Internet, Sza, etc. helping develop their sound). Then I saw GO:OD AM was coming out. He had signed under a major label, released a highly produced video for 100 Grandkids, and Mac Miller was back. He still had his vices of course (“Them pills that I’m popping, I need to man up // Admit it’s a problem, I needa wake up // Before one morning I don’t wake up”), but had bigger dreams and priorities and seemed focused on those goals. I was in a very similar mindset, and reconnected. Over the next year, I went back through the catalogue, catching up on what I’d missed in Watching Movies With The Sound Off and Faces. It was easy to appreciate the musical and lyrical maturation, knowing that personally Mac was on a healthier path now. With The Divine Feminine, he had fallen in love. The production was upbeat and jazzy, he was working with new transcendent musicians like Anderson Paak, Ty Dolla $ign, and Thundercat. “That was the first time I had a clear head in 10 years”, he said of that period on Zane Lowe. When I was slowly trying to navigate the previously avoided minefield of love and emotion, once again Mac was there on the other side letting me know how it felt.

 

“How absurd that you minimize female self-respect and self-worth by saying someone should stay in a toxic relationship because he wrote an album about them, which btw isn’t the case (just Cinderella is ab me). I am not a babysitter or a mother and no woman should feel that they need to be. I have cared for him and tried to support his sobriety & prayed for his balance for years (and always will of course) but shaming/blaming women for a man’s inability to keep his shit together is a very major problem. Let’s please stop doing that. Of course I didn’t share about how hard or scary it was while it was happening but it was. I will continue to pray from the bottom of my heart that he figures it all out and that any other woman in this position does as well.”

– Ariana Grande

 

Two years, a highly publicized breakup and DUI later we land at Swimming. Months prior to the album release, Mac Miller had erased his Instagram and dropped off the map. Funnily enough, I did a very similar thing this past year. With my health suffering and feeling overwhelmed by professional and emotional pressure, I took a summer job in India, hopped off social media and withdrew from the world. “I just need a way out of my head // I’ll do anything for a way out of my head”. Swimming is a time to pause and reflect; a chance to learn how to tread water. In this era of broadcasting all of our business into the void, there’s a certain peace in being reachable without constantly reaching out. Swimming was sad, but it wasn’t a cry for help. It was an acknowledgement of the demons that had plagued Mac for years, and an acceptance that drowning them in love and other drugs wasn’t going to make them go away. “It ain’t 2009 no more // Yeah, I know what’s behind that door”. An acceptance that it’s alright to not be alright. Balance.

Last Friday, I was sitting in my room, having just gotten back from some class that no longer matters when my phone started blowing up. “HOLY SHIT MAC DIED”. I shoved my first thought to the back of my mind. It couldn’t be. Popping open Twitter confirmed it; “#BREAKING: Rapper Mac Miller Has Died at 26. RIP.” “Mac Miller found dead of suspected overdose” “Ariana Grande’s Ex-Boyfriend Mac Miller dies”.

So who was Malcolm James McCormick? Mac Miller? EZ Mac? Larry Fisherman? Rapper? Producer? Depressed Addict? Ariana Grande’s ex? (Sigh.) Simply put, he was one of us. Losing Mac Miller feels like losing a close friend I hadn’t quite kept in touch with as much as I wanted to over the years. And just like that, he’s gone.

“Mac Miller made me want to rap.”, wrote one of my old high school classmates during the social media outpouring of love and despair over the weekend. It’s true. Some of my best memories from high school involve sitting around a picnic table in the park, or walking around the neighborhood, wildly typing 16’s into our free phones or writing in composition notebooks to spit over Soundcloud or Youtube instrumentals (A fair share of them Mac Miller beats). He was the cool older cousin from around the way we all aspired to be like. Yes, Mac Miller was a white rapper. But he didn’t feel like one. He didn’t have the anger and obsessiveness of an Eminem, the need to prove that he belonged of a Logic, or the oozing self-righteousness of a Macklemore. As Vince Staples once said, “White rappers are corny. White people that rap, it’s like, ‘Oh, that’s wassup. You white, you rap.’” When pressed by Larry King on how a “White Jewish boy from Pittsburgh” started rapping, he struggled for a second before simply saying, “It’s just something I loved to do.” He was a misfit, yes; but so was I. Mac was awkward at times, but never uncomfortable. Just a genuine person that spread positivity to everyone around him and also happened to be a really talented artist. As an Indian kid growing up in Durham, Mac showed me that regardless of what I looked like or what my background was, as long as I stayed true to myself and did things I loved I could define my own lane and be whole. Though I’m still a work in progress, I have been steadily moving down that path. And it fucking hurts to see him get cut down short of the finish line. Mac, I really hope if you’re out there, somewhere, you found your clarity. Here’s to the most dope homie that I never got to meet. Rest in Peace Mac Miller.