Michael G. BarilleauxThere’s plenty to be said about Mac Miller, the Pittsburgh artist who evolved from a high school party rapper with hit mixtapes to a major label success who found his way out of the frat house and into a world of abundantly more thoughtful, engaging and all-around creatively-impressive musicality. Much has been written of his heartbreaking death at the young age of 26 as well, a true shock to Hip-Hop and the world of music as a whole, though one that occurred under all too familiar, epidemic substance-abuse conditions – both inside the industry and in the United States as a whole.
And while I do feel compelled to mention these aspects of Miller’s remarkable life, artistry and untimely death – particularly since this LP explores many of them, particularly those of his drug addiction, rather thoroughly and in a time stamped-sort of way – I also believe that his posthumous music releases – of which this album is the second – are well beyond worthy of being explored in their own personal atmosphere, perhaps with a step back from much of their many complicated layers of context.
This latest release from Mac Miller’s estate, one that he apparently shelved years before his death and not long after the creation of his heavily-hailed “Faces” mixtape, is titled “Balloonerism”, and finds a rapper known for his immense artistic growth during his lifetime showing yet still further signs of progress and, perhaps even more intriguingly, reaching deeper into a jar of experimental expression that he was already thought to have entered at elbow’s length.
The thing about this new project is that it does what many listeners and writers have granted it accolades for. It surely takes more risks, as Mac uses entire songs to test out ideas and sonic arrangements that are far from standard or generalized. This is heard immediately on “Balloonerism” with the first two tracks – “Tambourine Dream” and “DJ’s Chord Organ.” Both of these tracks feature completely unusual approaches, as the former is composed of exactly what it describes – the sounds of a tambourine, and the latter uses an organ to back other unexpected aspects such as a verse from SZA, a much lesser known artist at the time who is now easily a household name in Hip-Hop, R&B and pop radio alike.
Other tracks on this album, such as “Funny Papers” take a much more delicate and almost whimsically-personal approach as calm, sweet piano chords join with jazzy bass riffs and a sentiment that finds Mac rapping sentimentally and then finishing the song by singing, “Why does it matter, at all?”
Additionally, the switch from this track to the warping instrumental of “Exelsior” – one with lyrics that may sound silly at first, yet ultimately evolve into an intriguing look at Miller’s carefree view of childhood – and from there to “Transformations”, is certainly an arrangement put together by the mind of an artist unafraid to try and fail.
Miller’s psychopathic alter ego Delusional Thomas assumes control on “Transformations”, an appearance that lends itself to a strong contrast from “Funny Papers” and “Excelsior” alike. For those who are unfamiliar with this character, he is one whose place in Miller’s work goes back as far as the first track, “The Star Room”, on his sophomore album “Watching Movies With the Sound Off’. This alter ego pops up from time to time across Miller’s catalog, most notably on the mixtape Miller put together that nearly exclusively featured his dirty and violent verses.
Something about “Balloonerism”, however, is that while it is deserving of high accolades and an even further look into Miller’s ability to stretch his artistry into a sort of beaming, creative wormhole, it does bear several similarities and replayings of its predecessor “Faces” in such a way that is difficult to ignore entirely. I make this remark primarily to point out that while this album is something special in the ways that it reaches out to greater heights, it is also not an entirely unique work in itself, even for Miller’s catalogue alone.
For example, on this LP listeners can hear many of the same exact flows and lyrical movements that they’ve heard all across “Faces”. These are flows found all across “Balloonerism”, those that sound so similar to the tired, casual but solemn vocal proceedings as songs off “Faces”. Tracks like “Stoned”, “Friendly Hallucinations” and “Shangri-La” flow so similarly to several of those on the mixtape that preceded it, such as “Friends”, “Angel Dust”, “Happy Birthday” and more. It would be easy to declare this as a simple continuation of “Faces”, or just write it off as Miller’s standard approach – his signature rapping style.
Both of these declarations would be flawed, however, as even if such a continuance exists between the projects in a natural, evolving way – which is completely justifiably artistic in its own right – it does beg the question: how ‘experimental’ and new can the makings of “Balloonerism” be if such a key part of it is something we all heard across its predecessor? To any claim that these flows are Miller’s go-to rap style, I would simply encourage a listener to revisit so many of Miller’s other albums – the aforementioned “Watching Movies With The Sound Off”, “GOOD A.M.”, “The Divine Feminine” and of course, “Swimming”, the final studio album he released before his passing.
These are albums that consist of a wide variety of flows and lyrical progressions on an abundance of their tracks. From “Bird Call” to “I AM WHO AM (Killin’ Time)” to “Break the Law” to “My Favorite Part” to “Self-Care” and beyond, Miller’s rapping style has taken so many different forms that it is hardly reasonable to pick out the semi-redundant rapping style I am referring to on “Faces” and “Balloonerism” as his standard procedure, so to speak.
While Mac Miller’s latest posthumous release does accomplish something interesting and worthy of accolades, and is ultimately a strong album, it should be held to its own limits.