What makes mac miller a good rapper

Miller advances as an artist while persevering over a new hiccup with drugs or depression or his personal life, all the while an existential quandary looms: Who is Mac Miller? In , at just 18, Miller released two mixtapes— K. They made Miller an overnight sensation. He became the most popular rapper—hell, artist —amongst young, suburban white dudes. Count me and my childhood friends in that group. The music of Miller and his peers was shallow; it was essentially hip-hop filtered through Pineapple Express or Project X.

Miller and his cohort built their following through rap blogs speaking of uncool, my friends and I had one called ThatCrackMusic , but they barely crossed into the mainstream before the rest of the Internet tore them down.

Their two-year relationship thrust Miller into an online spotlight he found uncomfortable. An MC who bridged old and new schools of hip-hop thought, a fact underlined by the company he kept: 70s funk-inspired bass master Thundercat, jazz futurist Flying Lotus and retro-soul revivalist Dev Hynes were just some of his regular collaborators. A rapper who existed in the same league as Kendrick Lamar, Drake, J Cole and one-time tour support Chance The Rapper, not quite amassing the same cultural footprint as those behemoths, but rivalling them for critical kudos and radio hits.

Mac Miller: grizzled determination made troubled star a rap icon. A year later, he repeated the gesture with Chance the Rapper, as the MC was rising from Windy City hero to national phenom. The first person to believe in me and make stuff w me. Simultaneously, Miller reinvented himself artistically.

Simple punchlines evolved into complex meditations on addiction, mental illness, and interpersonal relationships. His beats riffed on the moody, understated instrumentals of his peers.

Internal strife was always the focal point of his music, but across subsequent albums, the rhymes felt less tethered to the present, less observational than a series of recollections. It would be the last time Thundercat would see his friend alive.

Fentanyl, cocaine and alcohol were all present in his system. A bottle of alcohol and prescription pills were found in his home, and a powdery white substance was found on his person. According to witness statements in the autopsy report, Miller was last seen by his assistant around p. It was only when the assistant arrived the next morning — he typically woke Miller at a.

Miller had long struggled with addiction. The last such incident before the night of his death, according to his assistant, had been on September 4th, just three days before his death.

Miller openly discussed his dependence on lean, a combination of codeine and promethazine. It peaked around the time he was making his mixtape, Macadelic. I had never been that close to somebody who had issues like that. By all accounts, he was in his best mental and physical condition in years when he died. Miller had been working with his sober coach since , and was working out at an L.

Nobody sees me down like that. That was the hardest day ever. The first time I cried in years. He immediately broke down. Thundercat and Miller had big plans for the rest of the year.

On a late-July afternoon this year in Manhattan, Miller met with me for one of the first interviews he would give about Swimming. He said he was in a good place. In the weeks leading up to this death, Miller did what he always did to block out the noise: He worked on music. He was already deep in rehearsals for his upcoming tour, which was set to feature his dream band, including Thundercat.

It was him being percent with it.