Objects in the Mirror: The Legacy of Mac Miller

An artistic interpretation of Mac Miller.

Slash

The first time I heard a Mac Miller song, I was standing in a circle of fellow 14 year-olds in a ditch on the edge of a forest in New Jersey. I wish I remembered more details about the scenery, but there was so much cannabis smoke in my eyes that I could barely keep them open.

It was a pivotal time in my life: the summer of 2011, the last summer before the beginning of high school. The year prior, the girl I sat next to on the school bus every day had plunged into the midst of an adolescent, “rocker chick,” phase. I very fondly remember sharing a pair of old Apple earbuds every morning as, “Dr. Feelgood,” would blast, at deafening volumes, into both of our skulls from her iPod Shuffle. On the way home every afternoon, I would seethe with jealousy as she would relate to me, in great detail, the unknowable intensity of her crush on bassist Nikki Sixx (Mötley Crüe was clearly her 80’s glam rock obsession of choice). I thought she was pretty and my mind was host to a fairly blank canvas in terms of musical tastes at that age, so through crushing on her, I inevitably developed my own crush on rock n’ roll. Logically, I proceeded to grow my hair out to shoulder-length. I was very strict about making sure it never looked like I bothered to take care of it (which was easy, since I never actually did). It was all done in an effort to imitate the looks and personality of my newfound rockstar idols — after years of being the good kid who wanted nothing more than to please his elders and maintain his perfect grades, I now wanted the appearance and aura of a guy who loudly and aggressively didn’t care about what anyone else thought of him.

A young Nikki Sixx — otherwise known as the bane of my 8th grade existence.

Speaking of idols, I had chosen Guns N’ Roses as my gateway drug for gaining membership into the latest generation of kids to fiercely proclaim that they were born in the wrong generation; I identified with the people who, like myself, had no one to identify with, and I took a great deal of pride in doing so. Anyone with half a brain and a few extra years of life experience under their belt could see that I was going through a phase, an observation that the adults in my bubble of existence were all too ready to point out to me. This, of course, only furthered my conviction that I absolutely was not going through a phase. I can still clearly recall the first time someone told me that the mop of hair I had on my head made me look like Slash; it was my favorite compliment that I had ever received.

Naturally, it was around this time that I decided I would be the next great guitar god — the messiah who would finally bring about the return of sex, drugs, and rock n’ roll and turn the tide against all the, “pop shit on the radio.” My initial foray into solidifying this future for myself, though, was not to start playing guitar. That was far too anxiety-inducing. No, the first step in becoming a rockstar, as any child of the 21st century knows, is to read the autobiographies of the folks who have done it already. The aptly titled, “Slash,” was my bible of choice. As I absorbed the pages of the infamous guitarist’s life story into my brain, a rebellion of sorts was born in my soul.

“Fuck grades, fuck school, fuck the system. I need to go smoke some weed.”

K.I.D.S.

Thus, we arrive back at the scene of that circle of friends in the forest in the summer of 2011. We were cackling like hyenas as huge plumes of smoke from two poorly rolled joints soared into the open air above us. It was finally happening! I was a cool rebel teenager hanging out with the other cool kids, emulating my idols as I inhaled the smoke of a questionable substance that the dealer we’d met earlier that day vehemently insisted was only the finest Hindu Kush. It was at that moment, as I was reveling in these thoughts, that my feelings of triumph and validation were shattered by one of the guys in the circle. In an affront against all that I considered holy at the time, he opened up his flip phone and started playing a song that wasn’t conceived in a furor of drugs and booze on the Sunset Strip in 1980’s Los Angeles. Not only was it not the correct music, it was the most incorrect music he could’ve possibly chosen for the occasion. Within a split second of hearing it, I let loose an automatic verbal reaction.

“Bro, turn off this rap shit,” I aggressively demanded. “This isn’t even real music. There’s not even any real instruments…” my voice trailed off as my young, stoned mind suddenly became entranced by the spacey beat and timeless lyrics:

“Supposed to be in class but I ain’t goin’

Let’s chill on the couch…”

Later that night, after arriving back home and allowing my young neurons a few hours to recover from the frying they had suffered earlier in the day, I furiously googled the one line from the song that I could actually still remember. It was a line that came to perfectly distill the ideals of our little band of stoners until we inevitably grew apart in high school:

“SMOKE WEED, EAT YOGURT”

Thanks to my memory of this undeniably scholarly lyric, after just a few minutes of research, I had learned the following:

• The song in question was called “Senior Skip Day.” The music video for it was awesome.
• The artist was a sort of quirky-looking white dude from Pittsburgh, PA. He called himself Mac Miller.
• He was only 19, just a few years older than me, and the song had come off of a mixtape called K.I.D.S. that he had dropped one year earlier. K.I.D.S. was an acronym for “Kickin’ Incredibly Dope Shit.”
• He obviously didn’t care what anyone else thought of him, and he claimed to like smoking weed, so he met all of my criteria for what it took to be awesome.

A still from the Senior Skip Day music video — shopping for snacks, as is the wont of any stoner.

The tracks off K.I.D.S. quickly became the default anthems of that summer for me and my friends. Songs like, “Kool Aid & Frozen Pizza,” and, “Nikes on my Feet,” and the grassroots music videos shot for them will forever be associated with those 2 or 3 months of my early teenage years. Loving life, not having a care in the world, getting high under the crackling sun, being degenerate little shits who would hang out outside the CVS and ask any, “cool-looking,” strangers we saw to buy us a pack of cigarettes (we’d offer the necessary funds for the purchase and allow them to keep the change, of course… we may have been heathens, but we still understood basic fiduciary concepts) — it was a time of my life that I’ll always hold dear, and the soundtrack that was always playing behind it all was Mac Miller’s iconic breakthrough mixtape: K.I.D.S.

Watching Movies with the Sound Off

The summer came to an end, and thus began my journey through that dreaded era that all American teenagers go through— the 4-year period in which our lack of any semblance of wisdom combines with our raging hormones to form absolute and total chaos. We call it, “high school.” Our friend group disbanded just a few months into the school year when a couple of the not-so-cautious guys started smoking at the park across from school while the way-too-cautious cross country kids ran past them. One of those runners tipped off to the school administration that some dirty-rotten no-good ne’er-do-wells were smoking the devil’s lettuce on what was technically school property and disrupting the team’s practice by doing so. It didn’t take much effort for the vice principals and senior faculty to piece together who all the members of our social circle were (note to self: don’t sit at the same lunch table as the people you do illegal stuff with!)

I was the first one called to the school office for an interrogation and drug test. In hindsight, I was probably the first pick of the lot because I was the only one out of all of us who was in the, “gifted kid,” classes. They probably figured that if any one of us was going to break down under guilt and pressure and proceed to snitch on our fellow, “misguided,” peers, it would be me, the group nerd. I didn’t snitch, because I don’t suck; also, my drug test miraculously came back clean. Unfortunately, a bunch of the other guys were called to the office for testing almost immediately after I got out unscathed, and they weren’t so lucky. By the end of the day, I was labeled the snitch; the only way I could’ve gotten off scot-free, in the minds of my peers, was if I named names, selling everyone else out in an effort to save myself. It also didn’t help that my immediate associates weren’t the only ones getting screwed — the administration had seemingly decided to crack down on any and all suspected, “no-good, very-bad kids,” including upperclassmen. It wasn’t long before I was getting actual death threats from kids up to three years older than me who were more than double my size. Fun times.

An actual image of me, summer of 2011, hanging out in that NJ forest. I can guarantee that I was indeed, as my shirt says, “SPACED OUT.”

The result of this whole saga was that I was shunned not just by my buddies, but by the school’s entire overarching clique of, “cool kids.” In the span of 24 hours, I was forced to regress into being the loner with no identity that I had been just over a year earlier; the days of rebellion that had begun on the school bus with the rocker chick had unceremoniously crashed to an end. I was always, even in early childhood, prone to anxiety and depression, but for the first time in my life I felt these demons really set in properly and affect me on a daily basis. It wasn’t until two years later, my junior year, that I was able to fully embrace and accept a new identity for myself as a dedicated band kid and feel some sense of internal peace about who I was. Throughout the majority of those two years of soul-searching, I had largely lost track of Mac; his debut full-length album, Blue Slide Park, had come and gone without my notice as I wallowed in loneliness and anhedonia. But it would be another fateful summer at the end of that two-year stretch, this time the summer of 2013, wherein my days would once again be painted with the sounds of a new Mac Miller record.

Watching Movies with the Sound Off displayed an artist who was shockingly different from the loose, fun rapper I remembered from two years earlier. The songs were darker, more grown-up in every way. I listened to Mac lament about heavy topics like drug addiction, depression, suicide, and broken dreams. The flows and the beats were still deliciously spacey and addictive, but this time they were noticeably harsher sounding, a purposeful change made to depict how his launch into success and fame had bred within him a more introspective and doubtful psyche.

Mac Miller performing “Objects in the Mirror” with The Internet, a band of fellow musicians.

Objects in the Mirror quickly stood out to me and became my favorite track off the album. Fairly soon afterwards, it became one of my favorite songs Mac Miller had ever released up until that point. Now, seven years later, it stands strong as one of my favorite songs of all time; it has become my go-to for those times when I feel like I’m drowning and need to speak with someone who understands.

Although I wouldn’t realize it until a ways into the future, I now recognize that it was this very song that cemented a bond that I would feel with Mac for years to come. He was four years my elder, but when I listened to his music, I felt like I was growing up alongside him. It was deeply comforting to know that I was not alone as I traversed through the peaks and valleys of life — he was by my side as we journeyed through those ups and downs, as made evident by his lyrics. It felt as though he was a long-lost friend, a kindred spirit who was living a life parallel to mine, dutifully narrating every one of our triumphs and struggles in meaningful and thought-provoking ways. Every time I would coincidentally come across his latest songs, they always seemed to serve as startlingly perfect reflections of whatever my life was like at the time; K.I.D.S. had been there to share in my carefree attitude and happy mood in 2011, and Watching Movies with the Sound Off was there to depict, often in scarily accurate fashion, my internal struggles and despair in 2013. His words and the perspective and wisdom that they provided would help me to piece together the meaning behind it all, even when it all felt utterly meaningless.

“Don’t even say you ‘bout to end it all,

Your life precious, ain’t no need to go and kill yourself,

I’m not so sure that there’s an end at all,

I wish the truth would just reveal itself…”

-Mac Miller, “Objects in the Mirror”

Since his passing, I’ve read the words of an innumerable amount of fans across the planet as they mourn and grieve. Throughout my life, I had always thought it pretentious and fake when I’d hear anyone claim that a famous person they never personally knew had, “saved their life.” To essentially call someone a superhero when they are, regardless of fame, effectively a stranger, seemed asinine and disingenuous to me. But as I’ve read the words of Mac’s fans and friends and family and seen them say that very same thing, I’ve found myself unable to deny their proclamations of his heroism. Instead, I nod my head in understanding.

I know their words are true. I know Mac Miller really was and still is a superhero. I know because he saved me too.

Swimming

In the years following the release of Watching Movies with the Sound Off, Mac continued to let loose a steady flow of music that, once again, went largely under my radar. Every now and again, one of his new tracks or a video of a live performance would bubble to the top of my YouTube feed, and I would inevitably enjoy whatever I heard or saw. “My Favorite Part,” from 2016’s The Divine Feminine, for example, was an instant classic for me after my very first listen; a 21st century exchange of love letters in musical form, it has gone on to be associated in my mind with every girl I’ve fallen for since its release, and I still romanticize about a hypothetical day in the future when I can sing it for a muse of my own. The powerful ability of that song to make a listener swoon and daydream only made, “Dang!” even more special; serving as the whimsical foil to the powerful romantics of “My Favorite Part,” this track about the thrill of chasing a crush felt like classic Mac Miller — a bit goofy, very catchy, and impossibly charming. The music video for, “Dang!” also portrays these traits with incredible precision, serving as an iconic visual representation of his fun-loving and good-natured spirit. I would be lying by omission if I didn’t at least mention that plenty of songs from 2015’s GO:OD AM found their way into my daily musical rotation as well. But it wasn’t really until 2018 — in the heat of the summer, yet again — that I would once more find myself diving into the deep end of Mac Miller’s artistry.

“You just don’t know how beautiful you are,

And baby, that’s my favorite part,

You walk around so clueless to it all,

Like nobody gonna break your heart…”

-Mac Miller, “My Favorite Part”

I found out about Swimming, the final album he would release, via a promotional performance on NPR Music’s Tiny Desk Concert series. As of this writing, that performance is the second-most viewed Tiny Desk on YouTube, with a global view count rapidly approaching 30 million. I swell with pride and joy not just in knowing that so many millions of people still come back to that video to appreciate his performance, but also in knowing that I am the source of a statistically significant number of those views.

It had been a few years since I’d really taken a proper moment to look at Mac, and I don’t think I’d ever watched him perform in a setting as intimate as the Tiny Desk, “concert hall.” What I saw and heard as the video loaded on to my screen shocked and awed me in the best way imaginable. Mac Miller, now 26 years old, was a real grown-up — and not just in the sense of numerical age. On that stage was an artist who displayed a sense of confidence, comfort, and swagger that only comes with time and life experience. He casually joked and laughed with his small audience about that fact that he didn’t know what to joke and laugh about; he gently conversed and interacted with his fellow performers on stage between songs. While these may seem like inconsequential behaviors to take note of, they are the mark of a human being who has attained a profound level of peace within themselves, a most impressive feat considering that for so many years his lyrics had made clear that he was searching high and low for a sense of comfort in his own skin.

Perhaps most awe-inspiring to me, though, was that beyond the remarkable growth that shined through his eyes and radiated from his countenance, he was still undeniably Mac; the spirit of the same idealistic teenager from K.I.D.S. was still undoubtedly present, but it was now tempered by the wisdom born from the hardships chronicled on Watching Movies with the Sound Off; the triumphs and emotional journeys of GO:OD AM and The Divine Feminine made themselves known as well.

Mac Miller smiling in the midst of NPR Tiny Desk performance.

At the time that I watched that Tiny Desk, I was 21 years old and struggling through many of the classic internal crises that young adults grapple with around that age. It was the first time ever, for example, that I was able to look back on my life and see not just a homogeneous blend of 20+ years, but a divisible timeline of unique segments of my existence that each had their own distinct feelings and flavors. In particular, I was now able to look back at a clearly determinable period of time that I could call my childhood and reminisce over its simplicity, its innocence, its sense of wonder. I felt broken and defeated as I looked back and realized that the magic of those early years of life seemed to have left me some time ago; I had been too caught up in the banalities of daily living to even notice it leaving or wave it goodbye. There was a longing within me to go back in time so that I could perhaps bring a piece of that magic back into the present, some sort of spark to counter the harsh realities of young adulthood that I knew would only continue to increase in quantity and intensity for the rest of my life. What I was experiencing for the first time, I would later realize, was the sweet, sweet pain of nostalgia.

As I came to terms with what I was feeling and the fact that I felt hopeless to realistically do anything about it, I watched Mac Miller sing, “2009,” a ballad about the value of clear-eyed hindsight and how it can be used to harmoniously blend the past, both its beauties and its hard-earned lessons, with the present. I couldn’t help but crack a smile at the irony of it all. Before my eyes, seated on a stool behind the screen of my iPhone, was that same long-lost companion that had comforted and validated me time and time again for so many years and through so many different moments, here to once again soothe my latest anxieties and tensions and tell me that it was all going to be okay — and that he was absolutely sure of this, because he had been going through the same things too. He was there to tell me that the child from my past still lived on within me and was simply awaiting my care and attention, that I could still be host to a wacky imagination and a zest for life no matter how many revolutions I completed around the sun. Wisdom and hardship and experience didn’t have to replace wonder and magic and imagination — instead, they could all complement each other to create a more well-rounded and content soul. The fact that he still wore that same signature goofy grin of his, even after all he’d been through and continued to deal with, served as the ultimate proof of that fact. In short, Mac Miller did what he had always done for me and so many others around the world: he inspired hope.

“Yeah, okay you gotta jump in to swim,

Well, the light was dim in this life of sin,

Now every day I wake up and breathe,

I don’t have it all but that’s alright with me…”

-Mac Miller, “2009”

Swimming remains a deeply meaningful and important album to me. It is one of my favorite pieces of art to ever exist, and I am thoroughly convinced that it always will be. I could speak at great length about the powerful beauty and introspective genius of songs like, “2009,” and, “Come Back to Earth.” I could write lengthy essays about the masterful lyricism and flow displayed on tracks like, “Ladders,” and, “So It Goes.” It was by listening to and deeply appreciating the wisdom that these musical moments offered that I finally came to the full understanding of who and what Mac was to me. I had never met him, never spoken to him, never even so much as been in his presence, yet still, the irrevocable truth was clear: Mac Miller was a fixture of my life. A role model, an icon, a figure of guidance — the label I chose did not matter. I embraced the gravity and importance of his presence within my sphere of existence, a presence that had been there in some shape or form for seven years. It was at that moment that I knew with absolute conviction that he would occupy a special place in my soul forever.

No matter what.

That’s Life

The day I woke up to the news of Mac Miller’s passing, I was not overcome with sadness. There was no grief, there were no tears or feelings of emptiness — all of these emotions would swell to the psychological surface in varying degrees over the course of the next few months, and they still occasionally make unexpected appearances to this day. What I did immediately feel, however, was an overwhelming sense of shock. Watching his Tiny Desk performance was still a near-daily ritual for me, and I had been looking forward to attending a live show, what would have been my first live Mac Miller performance of many, during the upcoming Swimming Tour.

I remember a sense of pervasive disbelief in my mind when I read that he was gone. I remember sending messages to my close friends telling them about the news; in hindsight, I probably did that in the subconscious hope that someone might reply confirming that the whole thing was just a hoax. I remember all these things very clearly, but what I most vividly recall is spending the weeks following his leaving reading the words of his fellow artists as they mourned the loss of their dear friend.

There were a handful of common threads within everything I read during those weeks. Everyone was shocked. Everyone expressed how deeply they loved and appreciated and admired him. Everyone spoke of his genuine humility, his unbelievable kindness, his endless generosity. Perhaps most powerful of all, though, was not what they did say, but what they didn’t: no one who had personally known Mac Miller had a single negative thing to say about him, a testament to how profoundly he had been cherished by his peers.

In addition to the words of fellow artists came the outpouring of grief, love, and appreciation from his dedicated community of fans. To this day, the comment sections of YouTube videos featuring Mac’s music are filled with stories of how he inspired individuals in more ways than he possibly could have known, deep thoughts and observations about what a wonderful human being and artist he was, and poetic expressions of how we all love and miss him.

I was an Uber driver in a college town during that time, and I still remember how whenever Mac Miller’s music would come on in my car through my Spotify playlist, the 20-something year old students piled into the back of my Kia Soul would immediately put down their phones or halt their conversations so that they could voice their appreciative thoughts and gratitude for his music. In particular, I remember a passenger getting in the car late one night, drunk as could be, just as Senior Skip Day began to play. Hearing the song seemed to somehow have an immediately sobering effect on his sloshed demeanor; within just a few seconds of getting in the backseat, he was pulling down his shirt to proudly show me a caricatured portrait of Mac’s face on the back of his shoulder, a tattoo he had gotten as a tribute to the artist and man who he openly stated had inspired him the most during his life. It became clear at that point that his fans and the support they provided to one another were not relegated just to internet comment sections and Reddit posts; his community exists all around us, always at the ready to faithfully uphold his legacy. As time continued to pass, I kept listening to his music and following his guidance; he remained ever-present in my life, just as I had known he always would.

Almost a year later, a posthumous release featuring Mac, 88-Keys, and Sia made its official debut. Upon first listen, I finally shed my first tears over the loss of Mac Miller, but they were not tears of sadness — no, these tears came from a well of proud and joyous catharsis. “That’s Life,” can only be described as a beautiful, quintessentially perfect send-off in honor of a musical talent who served as the voice of a generation. Mac’s verses on the song serve as a poignant final reflection on his life, encompassing a wide spectrum of his demons, his triumphs, and the immense growth that had occurred throughout his life, as well as thoughts on the growth that he had yet to go through. It felt as though you could hear a smile behind his voice, and there was no doubt in anyone’s mind that this song was meant to depict him gently waving us all goodbye. Abbreviating his verses were emotionally soothing choruses about the fickle nature of life and death and how to deal with the scary reality of knowing we all must leave this Earth one day. The song was masterfully woven together by the beautiful production of 88-Keys as he layered Sia’s crooning voice behind Mac’s, and it was all wrapped up with a thoughtful final verse and chorus from Sia herself mourning the loss of her fellow artist, effectively voicing the thoughts and feelings of his millions of fans around the world as she did so.

“Yeah, I know it seem a little bit strange sometimes,

Everybody live a little, everybody die,

That’s life, what you gonna do?

That’s life, baby, I would spend it all with you…”

-88-Keys, Sia, Mac Miller, “That’s Life”

The most powerful aspect of, “That’s Life,” however, was the artwork for the track: a simple, child-like drawing featuring a bright yellow sun shining over a few flowers, a dog, and two people, presumably Sia and 88-Keys. But where was Mac in this drawing?

The sun in the top left corner was drawn wearing a smile, and atop this personified sun, the biggest and most brilliant star in our solar system that shines down on all of us and gives us light and hope and the energy we need to live and thrive, was a flat-billed hat adorned with a capital, “P.”

The, “P,” stood for Pittsburgh.

Malcolm

The date today is January 8, 2020. It is currently early in the afternoon and after completing some household chores throughout the morning, I took a moment to mindlessly scroll through my Instagram feed.

I’ve spent the last few days trying to figure out how to close out this piece — how to cap off my thoughts in an appropriately meaningful way. As I scrolled through my feed, paying only half-attention to the endless highlight reel I was seeing, I suddenly let out a gasp so loud that that my dog, who had been fast asleep on the bed behind me, jumped up in attention. I had been jolted by something I saw on my feed, something I had never expected or even considered within the realm of possibility. It was a post from the official Mac Miller Instagram account, the first post from that account in over a year — a beautifully penned note from his family that unveiled an upcoming posthumous release. The note tells of an album entitled Circles that Mac had been working on as a musical complement to Swimming. It will be released next Friday, January 17th.

I initially was overcome with a flash of excitement at the prospect of getting to hear more of what Mac Miller had been working on, but immediately afterwards came a swirl of mixed and confusing emotions. The note from his family touches on the emotional journey that continues to this day as they remember their loved one, the complex and difficult process that leads to making a decision as significant as choosing to release his final works, and the gratitude they feel for his fans who continue to support and maintain his undying legacy. I couldn’t help but temper my sudden elation with the thought of their struggles.

Within the context of being a fan, it is easiest and comes most naturally to simply feel excited for new Mac Miller music; within the context of being a human being, it is humbling and serves as a sobering reality check to even try to begin to imagine the journey that his family has gone through, and continues to go to through to this day, in the wake of his unexpected passing. The deep gratitude and profound respect I feel towards them is common, I believe, among all his friends and fans across the globe.

One observation I made was that the name, “Mac Miller,” did not appear in the contents of the note even a single time. We often get caught up in the gravity of artists, their personas as well as the mountains of beautiful treasures that they so graciously create and provide, but as a result, we often just as quickly forget that these people are also real human beings, just like the rest of us. With this thought, it became perfectly clear to me how I would end these writings.

As I patiently await the undoubtedly consequential wisdom that I know will come from within Circles, I choose not just to remember Mac Miller and the music he left for us, but also to honor the individual behind the microphone, a talented and wonderful man who gave us all so much in return for so little.

Thank you for everything, Malcolm.

“No matter where life takes me, find me with a smile,

Pursuit to be happy, only laughing like a child,

I never thought life would be this sweet,

It got me cheesin’ from cheek to cheek.

And I ain’t gonna wait for nothing,

Cause that just ain’t my style,

Life couldn’t get better,

This gon’ be the best day ever.”

-Mac Miller, “Best Day Ever”

Malcolm James McCormick, January 19, 1992 — Forever.