Mac Miller
Album: Swimming
Label: REMember Music, Warner Bros.
Release Date: August 3, 2018
Memento Mori
Written by Silas Valentino
If you’re reading this one then you might have read the last review RUKUS published on the Pittsburg MC Mac Miller. It was for 2015’s GO:OD AM, his third studio effort, and I panned it:
“Mac Miller, overall, sounds so desperately motivated to produce something grandeur and refreshing that he forgot to check himself before he – well, you know where that rhyme was going. And so would Mac Miller; simplistic writing appears to be his game.”
Brutal. Nevertheless, it was true. Mac Miller’s career was spent defending himself as he fought to legitimatize his art. Often falling short, he went on to earn ounce after ounce of respect. It began slowly, then gradually and then in spades with the release of Swimming, his fifth and what would become his final studio album.
The record is a feat. Songs blossom within the complex, jazzy frameworks he wrote personally – he’s a multi-instrumentalist with a talent for transmitting the sounds in his head onto a keyboard, guitar or drumkit – and lyrically, he delves into deeper themes like romance and adulthood with poignancy and sharpened self-reflection. This was the album he was always meant to record but Swimming doesn’t sound like a leap forward, rather, it’s the accumulation of years in steadfast maturation.
Mac Miller defied the odds (or just harsh critics) and stuck his landing. Swimming was released in August to collective acclaim. One month later he was found dead in his Los Angeles home from an accidental overdose of fentanyl, cocaine, and alcohol. He was 26 years old. His death immortalizes Swimming but ends his story in tragedy.
“Yeah, nine times out of ten I get it wrong/That’s why I wrote this song, told myself to hold on/I can feel my fingers slippin’” he coolly croons on the album highlight “Small Worlds,” a soulful number that flourishes with downtempo swagger and features an uncredited guitar solo courtesy of John Mayer. The moment is also one of several on Swimming that allude to his tribulations; was he reaching out for help through the lines in his bars? “Don’t wanna grow old so I smoke just in case” he declared and the eerie sentiment isn’t lost in the clouds.
Furthering the length of death’s shadow that’s cast across this album is the lead single “Self Care.” The song is shrouded in morbid coincidence; the title reflects his soon-fatal substance abuse and this line of lyrics is foresightedly accurate: “Swear the height be too tall, so like September I fall.” Moreover, the music video features him inside a pine box casket and includes a moment where he carves “memento mori” into the lid, which translates to “remember that you have to die.” At the time, all of this felt like a moment of perseverance, man defying death, but “Self Care” has since evolved with sad twists of irony that line every note.
After a decade scrapping for his spot within hip-hop hierarchy, Mac Miller justifies his inclusion in the mix of modern MCs worth a damn with his final release. He represents growth; how a flower can bloom in a dark room if you trust it. In June 2017, across a dozen Tweets commemorating the artists who inspired him, Jay-Z ended with: “Mac Miller nice too though.”
This time next year the last of Mac Miller may have been published. A posthumous album release seems inevitable and he’ll forever remain associated with artists who died due to fentanyl, Tom Petty, and Prince included. But the ink on his name will dry out. However, as will the criticisms that marred his creative output.
The haters have hushed since his passing, largely due to respect for the dead, but also because slowly then gradually he earned their respect. By the end, he seemed to have earned everybody’s.
Bazzi has a formula and damned if he’s going to tamper with it. Keep the melodies front and center, don’t stray far from the electronic keyboard and drumbeat combo and for the love of God never let a song break three minutes in length. It’s a simple method and hundreds of millions of streams later he proves it’s a successful one – but like the fleeting melodies he crafts or the short songs he sings, does the Bazzi formula translate into something sustainable or is this just another quick-burn click in the age of six-second videos?
A year ago most of the adult world was unaware of Bazzi, born Andrew Bazzi from just-outside Detroit, Michigan. He was a Vine (R.I.P.) celebrity who had the bygone social media’s premier “featured track” in 2015 with his song “Bring Me Home.” Vine was the perfect medium to illustrate Bazzi’s talents with its ephemeral beauty and tawdry aesthetic. Then in July 2017 while swimming and smoking by the pool, a melody popped into Bazzi’s head: a descending nine-beat staccato ear worm that instantly connected and as he told Rolling Stone last month, he knew immediately it’d be a hit.
What would follow – “Mine” – was indeed a smash, racking up millions of listens between streaming services and even sparking a fad on Snapchat that uses the “Be Mine” filter to let users highly a loved one. Less than a year later Bazzi has a multi-platinum single, a Top 20 album and a slot as the opener for Camila Cabello’s debut tour. Not bad for a 20-year-old kid from Michigan who idolized Justin Bieber.
In interviews, Bazzi admits he intentionally keeps his songs short to encourage listeners to hear the whole production. Cosmic barely breaks 42 minutes in length but offers 16 tracks – the longest, “Beautiful”, clocks in at 2:58. The brevity of Bazzi allows for the hits to leave listeners craving more while letting the clunkers pass by quickly; however, Cosmic is more blackhole than star-shining hits.
The record opens with “Dreams” which fits well in the trap-soul epoch of the moment. Armed with a falsetto croon and a delivery that suggests a possible Caribbean accent (something he lacks in conversation), Bazzi sings about his usual topic: women and eye balls. “I had a dream about you last night/Your eyes were shining so bright/Those lips and that bittersweet smile,” he sings with such conviction you’re left assuming it was a pretty slick dream.
Bazzi’s appeal lies not so much in his originality, rather, in his way of mixing his influences into his own music. “Myself” sounds like a cross between NSYNC’s thumping boy-beat bounce and the unexpected thrash of AWOLNATION’s “Sail” while the melody in “Mirror” is a dead-on cousin of Wiz Khalifa’s “See You Again” but with soulful Seventies-era piano sensitivity. His talent is easily recognizable since he wrote these songs himself and self-released his album (along with the juggernaut Atlantic Records) but innovation isn’t a trait of Bazzi’s, at least not before he reaches the legal drinking age.
Cosmic closes with “Somebody” where Bazzi sums up his first two decades of existence and personal credo: “Bad vibes, I just block them out/Michigan where I was poppin’ out/Now I’m in the Hills and I’m poppin’ now/I can’t take my eyes/Take them off this life.” It’s quite the statement for a young man just entering the unforgiving world of pop music but Bazzi’s bravado suggests he’s going out blazing, thinking solely of his dashing and fleeting present, and not of his star’s inevitable crash landing.