Mac Miller has accomplished every goal he ever set for himself. At least that's what the magazines say about the Pittsburg kid, and they're right enough. With his first album he became a grassroots rap megastar. With his second he bared his weird soul and was praised for it. His 11 mixtapes boast a couple bucket lists' worth of collaborators, from Bun B and Kendrick Lamar to Rick Ross and Juicy J. And in the same year that he toured the U.S. backed by a psychedelic soul band, he rapped all over Europe with Lil Wayne and 2 Chainz. He did indie. He's doing major. He even bought himself a ridiculous house in the Los Angeles hills and made a TV show about it. Hell, he made a jazz record.
But it's only now that Mac is stepping into the light. If the work he released surrounding 2013's acclaimed Watching Movies With the Sound Off seems dark, that's because he's been exorcising demons - literally if you consider the tape devoted to his horrorcore alter-ego, Delusional Thomas. As Mac's profile rose, his outlook sunk. While the picture he painted of himself through 2014's bleak-banging Faces tape is real as can be, it caught him in a surreal state: questioning everything, depressed. In 2015, at 23, we meet Mac all over again. The Mac who's got some answers, who sold the mansion, climbed out of the rabbit hole, and went back home to make his most confident and clear-headed album yet.
