The year is 2014. Mac Miller has defied hip-hop norms as a successful, independent act who’s sound has impressively evolved from easy-going frat-rap to psychedelic hip-hop. He is living in Los Angeles, burrowed in the hills of excess and fame. He’s high nearly everyday, hooked on a slew of substances to help manage his improbable rise. As a result, he’s constantly creating new, darker music. He’s still alive, but he’s not sure how. This is where Miller’s second posthumous release, Balloonerism, finds him.
In September of 2018 Miller died of an accidental drug overdose at age 26, leaving behind several unfinished projects. Ballonerism became one of the most notable of them after several songs, and even a proposed tracklist, surfaced online as fuzzy leaks on obscure Soundcloud profiles. Unlike 2020’s Circles, the rapper’s first posthumous release, the newly released LP goes back over a decade into the archives to reveal some of Miller’s darkest, most experimental work — and his fraught state of mind.
For hardcore fans, the bulk of Balloonerism is nothing new. The songs have not been reinvented or seemingly dabbled with. Instead, the album sounds like outtakes from Miller’s 2013 sophomore effort, Watching TV with the Sound Off, and Faces, the self-released mixtape that followed a year later.
Recorded in the spring of 2014, Balloonerism finds Miller as the sometimes visionary, sometimes inconsistent stoner with bold instrumental instincts. Album highlights include “Rick’s Piano,” one of two songs recorded at Rick Rubin’s Malibu studio back when Miller turned to the esteemed producer to help him detox from his drug addictions. The piano-focused “Funny Papers” shows seeds of Miller’s 2018 cut “2009” from Swimming being planted as he uses twinkling melodies and a simple beat to tell a story.
Meanwhile, woozy, electric guitar and bass lines pierce through the smoke on “Stoned,” “Friendly Hallucinations,” and “Mrs. Deborah Downer” in what feels like a precursor to the funk of 2016’s The Divine Feminine and leveled up instrumentation of Swimming. The SZA-assisted “DJ’s Chord Organ” is a hazy, jazzy moment that centers SZA’s lush vocals more than Miller’s raps.
Editor’s picks
“Excelsior” and “Transformation” show off Miller’s experimental side by using a swath of real-life sounds pushed up against trip-hop beats with stops and stutters that drip with the unmeasured wobbliness of Miller’s drug-fueled daze. In “Transformation,” Miller’s alter ego Delusional Thomas channels Donnie Darko-esque dubbed vocals to illustrate his own psychosis. The 11-minute “Tomorrow Will Never Know” ventures into the weirdest spaces with muddled sounds of children shouting and playing, while a telephone rings in the distance. The dissonance brings an uneasy, tragic reminder that Miller can’t answer the call anymore.
Most of the album doesn’t feel linear enough to become infectious, but that’s really not the point of Balloonerism. Its strength lies in its ability to resurrect Miller’s philosophical questions about life and death, almost as a way to find answers about his own. On “Rick’s Piano,” Miller tries to hope for the future but offers questions that are more poignant now that he is gone: “What does death feel like?” and “Why does death steal life?”
Miller rapped about his own demise for most of his discography, especially as he continued to use various drugs. But, in retrospect, the lyrics hold a different weight than they did when he was actively struggling. Now, every word comes across as prophetic. “If I die young, promise to smile at my funeral,” he directs on the Rubin-assisted “Shangri-La.”
Ballonerism closes with “Tomorrow Will Never Know,” where Miller ponders the afterlife, and concludes “living and dying are one and the same.” It’s a call for reinvention, but by nature, the posthumous release cannot offer that. Instead, Ballonerism does provide a strange solace by revealing some of the darker inner workings of Miller’s mind, even four years prior to his death. Miller is an artist who was constantly in pursuit of a better tomorrow, and unafraid to show the messy process as he made his way there.
