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Mac Miller  

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Born on the 19th of January 1992, Mac Miller (Malcolm James McCormick to his mum) is a rapper, producer and instrumentalist from Pennsylvania, USA. Despite his age, McCormick has an extensive discography of two studio albums, two E.P’s, 11 mixtapes and a whopping 29 music videos.

Yes, Mac Miller might have only been legally allowed to drink in his home country for a single year, but he’s had one of the most comprehensive and prolific music careers of anyone from his generation. This might come from the fact that he might only be 22 years of age, but he’s been rapping since the age of fourteen, released his first mixtape (2007’s “But My Mackin’ Ain’t Easy”) at fifteen.

However, even before then music was a big part of his life. Miller was playing the guitar nonstop with the intention of being a singer/songwriter, but gave that up when people were, in the words of his friend Jimmy Mourton “people were hating on his voice.”

Well. If you’re going to show up the haters, one way of doing that is having the first independently released debut album to hit number one on the billboard charts since 1995. So Miller did just thatm and his debut album, 2011’s “Blue Slide Park” sold 145’000 copies in its first week. Despite that, Miller still admirably considers himself an underground rapper.

2013 saw the release of his second effort “Watching Movies With The Sound Off”. A record made with the cream of young rap talent, like Tyler The Creator and Earl Sweatshirt of Odd Future, Action Bronson and Ab-Soul all making guest appearances.

Mac Miller is an alpha example of why it’s great to be a music fan today.IIn him and many others, we have talented, unique young artists with years of experience already under their belts, and they’re only going to get better with age. One to watch, for sure.

Live reviews

I love Mac Miller ( like a person and artist) I love his music!!! Was an awesome concert!!! I got tickets for VIP meet and Greet, I pay extra for VIP sits just I hope next time you can do different package VIP +pictures Allowed hugs and at least talk to you for a second!! ( I was just trying to said great job and I hope one day he make music with Spanish and English and Spanglish !!! I think I lot people like that ) I was so scared about the security , he was super rude . I was kind a sad because I was expecting Mac Miller to sign my tshirt just for my stepdaughter she's 9 years old and I guess because I love him and his music she feels the same way , I started drinking dancing and having fun and then the security told me That I could not step up with my knees on the chair !!! I was super disappointed and he kill my vibe so bad after that I was super sad because I waited so long to go to his concert.Im short And I wasn't able to see Mac on the back, that make me sad than I started thinking about more positive things and I stopped complaining about the situation (I'm a adult what's wrong with me !!!)just some many feelings!!! I love you Mac I think you are a increible person ( I can feel your energy) I don't know you but I feel you're a super cool dude and crazy just like my fiancé Ahahahahhahahahhahah ( my fiancé is better lol) anyway I hope I can see you next time and you can sign my shirt please and You look so happy in love !!! That's awesome treat Ariana like princess show all the kids out there what the right think to do in a relationship and real love !! I wish you the best today and always love to you and all your family and friends!!!! Kisses to Ariana and the babies dogs !!!! I'm a animal lover too !!! Thanks again and I hope you can be so fucking famous and you can change the world!!! Xoxoxoxooxoxo Anabel Salcedo

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My girlfriend has a tendency to drag me (kicking and screaming mind you!) to see things I have absolutely no interest in, so I was reluctant when she asked me to escort her to see her favorite artist Mac Miller.

I had no idea what I was getting myself into, but thankfully I was pleasantly surprised. Mac Miller is a young and talented lyricist, whose songs appear to have a conscious message, which is refreshing since a majority of the hip hop being produced today is more focused on money, material possessions and treating women objectively.

Upon arrival to the concert the first thing I noticed was that venue was a lot smaller then some of the concert halls I had seen in the past, however this was a positive as it allowed Mac Miller and his four man back-up band to really engage with the crowd. Mac Miller would take periodic breaks in between each song to talk to and hype up the crowd.

Mac Miller started his set with the song Live Free (which I had heard before since my girlfriend loves the song ) and just kept dropping heat the entire night. I was not aware of Mac Miller prior to this concert but he just got a new fan.

To begin, I had completely forgot about this show until a few hours before and had already had a long day and the night before so wasn't in the best of moods to gl begin with.

I find the vogue theater in Vancouver is not great sound wise if you are in the above seating area, and that's where I wanted to be on that night for this show due to beginning statement of mine.

I did not really enjoy mac millers show as much as I hoped I would. Unfortunately for him his catalog is now quite large and for him to give his audience a nice variety of it every show is going to be hard. I would have preferred to hear some songs (besides lucky ass bitch, loud, and nikes) from macadelic and kids. I have not spent much time listening to both his new projects which is probably why I didn't enjoy it really.

Overall Mac was actually pretty good, I would like if the backing instrumentals were a bit quieter so the audience could him better but apparently everyone these days is deaf or on enough alcohol and drugs to not care.

Malcolm James McCormick may only be 23 years old but he is fast becoming one of the most exciting names in hip-hop. Having broke from beneath the radar in 2011 with his debut 'Blue Slide Park' which topped the charts in his homeland of the States was a huge moment for him yet a good amount of his following knew about Miller from the exciting mix tapes he had been releasing on the underground circuit.

Much to their delight, a number of tracks from these early works had been included on the setlist this evening and a small amount of fans rap/sing along as Miller takes this apt opportunity to thank them for the continued support. He performs a varied set that does not only rely on the two full lengths, although these tracks are well received by the audience. It is clear that Mac Miller really wants to demonstrate that there is substance behind the hype that surrounds his career. By the approving cheers from the crowd I think he has successfully proven that this evening.

When I heard Mac Miller was coming to Denver I was so excited and knew I had to go. The night had finally come and I could hardly contain my excitement. After what seemed like forever he finally came out. He sang only about 5 songs before the show was over. I wasn't ready for it to be over. When he was out he rocked it, but he seemed rushed to get the show over and be done. That was a little disappointing for sure. But will that stop me from going to see him again? Most likely not. I just hope that next time he'll perform a little longer. He's an amazing artist.

I have one bad thing to say about Mac Miller live, it was not long enough. Mac killed it on stage and mixed in just enough of his old tracks with his new album, "The Divine Feminine" to keep the crowd buzzing the entire time. The music itself was awesome and the experience felt like Mac really spent a lot of time working to get the show feeling like it did. My only critique is that his visuals could have been interwoven better with the show and played more of a part, but other than that 10/10 concert.

Amazing!!!!!!!!!!! CANNOT WAIT TO GO TO THE NEXT SHOW 13/10! It was truly a prefromance, he did old songs, new songs, sad songs, love songs, happy sad songs. He covered everything and gave it his all! He said the last song so I left about half way through to miss traffic and I heard him preform TWO more songs! Take about a crowd pleaser! If my boyfriend would of let me, I would of ran back to catch the ending!

Insane show! Mac performed flawless and really knew how to animate the crowd. He really interacted with the crowd, at some time he just started singing the Star Wars theme and everybody joined in, it was really fun.

Before the show you could talk to ClockworkDJ and get a picture taken.

Would recommend everybody to go to a Mac Miller show if you get the chance! I would definatly go again.

I'm a fan of Mac Miller since all these first mixtape, I was going many concert, hoping one day to talk to her, laughing with her, ect.. And that night, at Trianon at Paris, I could realize my childhood dream, and it's the most Wonderful Evening of my life, meet his idol is a thing I want is anyone ! Thank you for everything Malcom , god bless you bro'. BEST DAY EVER !

MAC MILLER IS INSANE (in a good way)!!!! The openers were nice and all but I've never seen a crowd so ready for someone like Mac's concert, that the crowd actually kept sighing every song that someone else was rapping or singing. But when he came on, we were in a whole new world!! Very entertaining and down to Earth. One band, one sound. I've changed, a lot!

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Mac Miller’s Last Days and Life After Death

By Dan Hyman

One week before his death , Mac Miller was happy. On August 31st, the rapper invited the bassist Thundercat — a close friend and collaborator — and his daughter, Sanaa, over to his Studio City, California, home to spend the entire day celebrating the girl’s 12th birthday. “He refused not to celebrate it with us,” Thundercat recalls with a laugh. “He was like, ‘What do I get her?’ ‘I dunno, some Gucci flip-flops?’ ” Miller treated his guests to dinner, sang “Happy Birthday” twice, and then retired to the couch, where the three friends spent the rest of the night watching Sanaa’s favorite TV shows — with Miller periodically stealing her phone and trolling her Instagram and Snapchat feed. “The happiness was there, man,” Thundercat says. “I could see it in him. And it wasn’t fake.”

It would be the last time Thundercat would see his friend alive. On September 7th, shortly before noon, police officers responded to a frantic 911 call placed by Miller’s personal assistant and longtime sober coach, who discovered Miller’s lifeless body in a bedroom in his sprawling, compound-like home moments earlier. The 26-year-old rapper — who topped the charts as an independent teenage artist and championed and befriended many of hip-hop ’s biggest talents, and whose career was defined by a relentless desire to improve his craft — was pronounced dead at the scene. According to an autopsy report released by the Los Angeles County Coroner’s Office on November 5th, Miller died of an accidental overdose. 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 10:30 p.m. on September 6th, and spoke to his mother on the phone that night. It was only when the assistant arrived the next morning — he typically woke Miller at 11:30 a.m. — and discovered Miller’s body that anyone close to him knew anything was wrong.

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Miller had long struggled with addiction. While he was attempting sobriety, he had frequent “slip-ups,” according to a statement in the autopsy report, that could be excessive. 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 2012 mixtape, Macadelic . “He had sort of made a turn after the making of [his 2011 debut album] Blue Slide Park, where I think he got a little bit deeper into drugs and was talking about it,” says Benjy Grinberg, the founder of independent Pittsburgh record label, Rostrum Records, who signed Miller to his first record deal in 2010 and served as his de facto manager for several years afterward. “It was definitely scary. I had never been that close to somebody who had issues like that.”

But for those closest to him, Miller’s death still came as a shock. 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 2016, and was working out at an L.A. gym nearly every day.

Two weeks before Miller’s death, Ty Dolla $ign, who was in the midst of working with him on a joint project, spent the day with Miller at Chalice Recording Studios in L.A. “He was in good spirits,” says Ty, who first met the rapper through the pair’s mutual friendship with Miller’s onetime Rostrum labelmate Wiz Khalifa. “He had everybody in the room dying laughing.” Miller also met Fifth Harmony member Dinah Jane for the first time that day, “and she was talking about how nice he was,” Ty remembers. “She didn’t think he was gonna be that cool, but he was supercool. I’m like, ‘Yeah, man. That’s Mac.’ “

When he learned of Miller’s passing, via text message while on tour in Tampa with G-Eazy and Lil Uzi Vert, Ty broke down. “I went outside of my bus to try to catch a breather,” he says. “I was crying. And I don’t ever cry. Nobody sees me down like that. That was the hardest day ever. The first time I cried in years.” When he heard the news, Ty quickly phoned Thundercat. “I had to tell him the news and shit. He immediately broke down. He was like, ‘The last thing he said was, “Bro, I just want to make it to tour.” ‘ “

Thundercat and Miller had big plans for the rest of the year. He and Miller were set to hit the road this fall on a joint tour behind the rapper’s new album, Swimming, and, more urgently, they had plans to shoot a bold music video in mid-September for the collaborative track “What’s the Use?” A wide-ranging cast of celebrities and friends of Miller’s, from TV personality Guy Fieri to Kehlani and Mac DeMarco, were set to make cameos dancing along to the song. “He just wanted people to know how hard he’d been working,” Thundercat says. “Up until the last words we spoke to each other, it was nothing short of pure excitement.”

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On a late-July afternoon this year in Manhattan, Miller met with me for one of the first interviews he would give about Swimming . It was one of the first times he’d been out in public following his highly publicized breakup with Ariana Grande, a tumultuous event made worse when, days later, Miller was arrested on charges of DUI and hit-and-run after he allegedly crashed his Mercedes SUV into a power pole near his home and fled the scene. But Miller told me that, despite tabloid headlines following his arrest that suggested he’d fallen back into his drug-abusing ways, he’d learned to be the judge of his own reality. He said he was in a good place.

“Don’t get me wrong — I record music like a fucking meth addict,” he followed up with a laugh. “But these people online thinking I’m super-fucked-up on drugs when I’m not. . . . That’s not the worst thing in the world. It just doesn’t seem that important to me.  How are you going to expect a bunch of people who are just reading random headlines or hearing about a DUI or assuming you’re in a superdark, depressed place to form any other conclusions? I can’t expect that everyone is going to be like, ‘Nah. Malcolm, he’s a good person.’ “

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. “He made me want to get on my shit,” the bassist says. “Because I could see it in him. It wasn’t him playing the game. It was him being 100 percent with it.”

“That’s the part that hurt the most,” the singer Miguel, who collaborated with Miller on “Weekend,” one of the biggest hits of their careers, says. “He had just put this incredible album out. He was ready to go on tour with one of his really close friends. There was a lot in the air. He was looking forward to something new.”

Even after Swimming ’s release, on August 3rd, and some of his most positive reviews that came with it, Mac was already back at work on new music. He’d been in the studio with producer Frank Dukes, and he and Post Malone had plans to make an album together. “Mac never stopped working on music from the moment I met him up to and including the week he passed,” says his longtime producer, Eric “E. Dan” Dan. The producer first met Miller at his ID Labs Studio in Pittsburgh when the rapper was releasing self-funded mixtapes, and Dan went on to work on every one of Miller’s projects. “I don’t think you’ll find anybody that would tell you he was anything but excited to go on tour, happy to have an amazing and well-received album out and looking forward to the future.”

On August 5 th , Miller performed an intimate show at L.A’s Hotel Café for a crowd of 100 or so close friends and family to celebrate his album release. The 10-song set list that night ran through the rapper’s music from the recent past and concluded with “2009,” a string-swelling track off Swimming so personal that the rapper had once felt self-conscious about including it on the LP. “Now every day I wake up and breathe/I don’t have it all, but that’s all right with me,” Miller sang before walking offstage.  

Waiting for him in the wings was Benjy Grinberg, one of his earliest champions. Grinberg says he and Miller hadn’t spoken much in recent years, but “when he came offstage that night he gave me one of the nicest hugs I’ve ever received and continued on to his green room,” Grinberg says. “It was a really nice moment for me.” It was the last time he saw Miller: “Looking back, I’m happy that I at least had the chance to see him in person one more time.

“It still doesn’t feel real at all,” Grinberg adds. “I actually had a dream last night that I was at his wedding and woke up and was like, ‘Damn.’ Honestly, I still feel a bit numb.”

Long before he wanted to be a rapper, Miller, born Malcolm James McCormick to a photographer mother and an architect father, was a natural-born creative spirit. So inventive was a young Mac that his older brother Miller would compare him to the central character in the children’s show Harold and the Purple Crayon . “He’s this kid who draws his own realities,” Mac told me in July, describing the cartoon character. “I’ve always been into that kinda stuff.”

He began rapping at age 14, making a name for himself on the Pittsburgh freestyle scene first as EZ Mac, before rebranding as Mac Miller. He connected with Grinberg and Rostrum A&R man Artie Pitt — who were running the label, home to rising local star Khalifa — while he was still a teen. Grinberg and Pitt recall frequently running into Miller at E. Dan’s ID Labs. “He was a go-getter and he knew what he wanted,” Pitt recalls of a teenage Miller. “And that’s a big part of being a superstar, being able to run your own ship. He had the vision for it. I knew he was going to be that guy.”

With the release of his 2010 mixtape, K.I.D.S. (Kickin’ Incredibly Dope Shit) , an 18-year-old Miller began attracting national attention, thanks in part to the track “Kool Aid & Frozen Pizza,” which sampled the Lord Finesse song “Hip 2 Da Game.” (In 2012, Lord Finesse sued; he and Miller settled later that year.) Miller’s early raps were juvenile, but sampling a hip-hop legend like Finesse signaled to others that here was a young man with a sincere respect and curiosity for hip-hop’s storied legacy. “He could have chosen any beat he wanted,” DJ A-Trak, who’d become friendly with Miller in the ensuing years, says of “Kool Aid,” “but to choose something as dope in the hip-hop sense as Lord Finesse is such a cool first destination.”

The following year, Miller released his major-label debut, Blue Slide Park . It was a massive commercial success, the first independently distributed debut album to top the Billboard 200 since Tha Dogg Pound’s Dogg Food , in 1995. Critics universally dismissed it, though, as insipid and unoriginal hip-hop. Miller was easily slotted into a cadre of other current young white rappers, like Asher Roth and Sammy Adams, and was derided as a “frat rapper.”

“He was never a frat rapper,” Pitt argues. “The music was never frat rap. Him and I had that conversation many times.” This intense criticism, including an infamous 1.0 review for Blue Slide Park on Pitchfork, took its toll, but it eventuallly bolstered Miller’s creative ambition. He soon relocated to L.A. and, first with 2012’s Macadelic and 2013’s Watching Movies With the Sound Off , he began experimenting with inventive new sounds as well as producing his own music, often under the moniker Larry Fisherman. He also became a key fixture in the L.A. rap scene, forming friendships and collaborating with artists including Earl Sweatshirt, Vince Staples and Schoolboy Q, in addition to more experimental, jazz-indebted musicians like Thundercat and the psychedelic DJ-producer Flying Lotus.

“It’s awesome, man,” Miller told me in 2013 . “All of us, we’re all making music together, we all enjoy each other’s music and push each other to do better.  Personally, I think the most talented people in music right now are the people coming through my studio.”

That was also when the rapper began using harder drugs. Having frequently accompanied him on the road, Pitt says he harbors regret about this time in Miller’s life, and he has the sense he could have done more to help. “I was always worried about him at that time,” Pitt says. “I carry some guilt in my heart even up until now. I do struggle with it a bit when I think about it. I guess I always thought that it would be under control.”

Miller’s drug use was reflected in the music. His jazzy 2013 mixtape,  Faces, opens with the rapper pondering his own death: “I shoulda died already, shit/Yeah, I shoulda died already/Came in, I was high already.” On “God Speed,” one of the most revealing tracks on his 2015 major-label debut, GO:OD AM , which he released after signing a label deal with Warner Bros. worth a reported $10 million, Miller raps, “White lines be numbing them dark times/Them pills that I’m popping, I need to man up/Admit it’s a problem/I need a wake-up/Before one morning I don’t wake up.”

For Miller, music was a form of connection — to different people, sounds and, often, himself. “That’s what’s most important — I want the whole body of work to feel like it’s me,” Miller said in July. “I speak through my music. So when people say, ‘How’s he doing?’ I can just say, ‘Listen to the music.’ That should be able to tell you.”

Mac’s trajectory was one of constant musical evolution, and even after his initial reinvention from precocious party rap to avant garde experimentation, he would switch course again. 2016’s Divine Feminine marked a third act to his artistic career. It featured live instrumentation and funky grooves, was easily his most beatific and optimistic work yet. It’s also when he began singing more prominently on his albums. “My only goal was to continue to get better,” he told Rolling Stone that year. “That’s all I want to do.”

Swimming , released three months ago, was in the same sonic vein as Divine Feminine , but it marked a step forward. It featured some of the most wrenching and, at times, painfully sad lyrics of his career. But its music, all orchestral swells and swishy keyboards, felt like a clear and cohesive statement from an artist more comfortable than ever in his ambition. And the album’s diverse roster of collaborators, from John Mayer and Blood Orange’s Dev Hynes to Jon Brion, were prime indicators of the respect Miller had steadily earned from his peers. “Just the pure artistic growth and achievement itself is commendable,” A-Trak says. “Sure, early on some people didn’t want to give him his due, but he persevered through that and just kept his head down. You have to respect that.”

Since Miller’s death , the people who knew him have been eager to share what kind of person he was. “He was always polite to everybody,” Ty Dolla $ign says. “Spoke to everybody as soon as he comes in the room. Would shake everybody’s hand. He was just a supernice dude. Nobody that I know can say anything bad about him.”

On of the most touching tributes came from Ariana Grande, Miller’s ex-girlfriend, who took to Instagram to post a candid video of him a week after his death. “i adored you from the day i met you when i was nineteen and i always will,” she wrote. “we talked about this. so many times. i’m so mad, i’m so sad i don’t know what to do.” Grande would later reference Miller in her latest single, the Billboard-topping “thank u, next.” “Wish I could say, ‘Thank you’ to Malcolm,” she sings. “‘Cause he was an angel.”

“Beyond helping me launch my career he was one of the sweetest guys I ever knew,” Chance the Rapper wrote on Twitter. “Great man. I loved him for real. I’m completely broken. God bless him.” Mayer wrote on Instagram, “You gotta know that if you weren’t familiar with Mac Miller, you were about to be, whether you would have seen him at a festival, or a friend was going to catch a show and tell everyone they knew about it (like I did.) Mac put in the work.”

Elton John paid tribute to Miller on the opening show of his farewell tour, in Allentown, Pennsylvania, the night after Miller’s passing. The singer dedicated “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” to the rapper. “Unbelievably, 26 years of age, and passed away yesterday,” the legend said before launching into one of his most recognized songs. “It’s inconceivable that someone so young, and with so much talent, could do that.”

“He would’ve gotten a huge kick out of someone as random and iconic as Elton John dedicating a song to him,” E. Dan says.

“It makes me happy that he got to put this last album out and see how well-received it was,” he adds, “but incredibly sad that I know he had so much more to say musically and would continue to amaze us all.”

Miller was aware that, even as he was in the midst of creating each of his artistic statements with his friends and peers, it was he alone who was responsible for his overall legacy.

“You eventually realize you’re the only variable,” Miller said a few weeks before he died. “The only difference is you. That’s why you have to be that honest. You put so much of yourself into what you do. Because in the end you’re the only thing that’s different. You’re the only thing that sets it apart.”

“Who knows what the perception of me is at this point?” he admitted to me in 2016. “To be honest, I don’t even know anymore. For a while it was like, ‘Oh, he’s a rich white kid,’ which is false. Then it was ‘He’s a drug addict,’ which was up for interpretation. At this point, I just want my music to be it. Just go there . As time goes on, people may or may not get the idea. But they don’t need to. All they need to do is listen.”

“It’s been tough. Really tough,” Thundercat tells Rolling Stone on a late-October afternoon. The bassist should be embarking on the start of a world tour with his friend, but instead he’s still emotionally reeling, six weeks after Miller’s passing. “But I don’t want to shut out the world. Sometimes getting together can help bring closure, or at least a bit of solace.” A few days later, he did exactly that.

On Halloween night, at the Greek Theater in Los Angeles, a star-studded lineup was assembled — from Miller’s close friends (Vince Staples, SZA, Earl Sweatshirt) to his collaborators (Mayer, Miguel) and admirers of his artistry (Travis Scott, Rae Sremmurd) — for a sold-out tribute concert in his honor. Miller had been booked to appear there for an early stop on his Swimming tour. When he died, his team kept the venue for an opportunity to reflect on his legacy.  

“I would have done anything he asked me to do, and he would have done the same,” Anderson .Paak tells Rolling Stone in the days leading up to the show. He had promised Miller that he’d join him onstage that night to perform their Divine Feminine collaboration “Dang!” Instead, the musician performed alone at a drum kit, with Miller’s vocals piped in through the PA. Before launching into their song, .Paak eulogized his late friend. “I’ve been blessed enough that my closest friends, they’re still here,” he said. “I know if you’re in this industry a while, or you just live life long enough, you’ll see people come and go. But this one was really heavy for me. That was my friend.”

The concert lasted three hours. There were performances and tributes and testimonials from a generation-spanning range of celebrities and collaborators. What they each had to say — from Pharrell Williams to Lil Wayne, DJ Jazzy Jeff to DJ Premier, Donald Glover to Dev Hynes — was overwhelmingly positive, and hard to listen to.

But it was Miller, seen smiling in behind-the-scenes videos spanning his entire career, that provided the brightest light.

There was Mac goofing around backstage, hamming it up as he sang Creed songs in the studio, sharing rather than receiving wisdom with Rick Rubin (“I just make whatever I want to make, and then I try to fight for it, I guess”). And, as the night drew to a close, there he was, in a simple clip likely shot on his smartphone, seated at a piano by himself, singing an unreleased song. It wasn’t like his normal fare — more Randy Newman than Rakim — hinting at yet another artistic reinvention on the horizon, but it was every bit as earnest and affecting and vulnerable as his best work. “I wonder if they even cared at all,” Miller sang. The crowd was silent, enraptured. They did care, still do and always will.

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What The Final 12 Months Of Mac Miller's Life Looked Like

The story of Mac Miller 's final months is a sad but familiar one to so many people who have struggled (or seen loved ones struggle) with drug abuse. After an on-again, off-again struggle with sobriety, he slipped up, overdosing sometime in the early morning hours of September 7, 2018.

His death took many by surprise, not because they believed he'd finally conquered his addictions, but because he seemed so full of life. As Rolling Stone reported, the night before the overdose, Miller had been happily celebrating the 12th birthday of the daughter of a friend — not exactly an example of superstar excess.

But Miller was never a typical superstar. As a white rapper, most assumed he would be the butt of jokes. Miller was reportedly bothered by frequent labeling early in his career as a "frat rapper," a label that wasn't just reductive, it was downright wrong. Despite the criticism, though, Miller worked hard and eventually overcame his critics' dismissal. But hard-fought popularity wasn't enough to save him.

The road to success and ruin

While it doesn't exactly take a lot of psychic ability to worry about the future of someone in the grip of addiction, Miller was one of many musicians whose music appeared to predict an early death . As The Blemish noted, one lyric was particularly chilling: "To everyone who sell me drugs/Don't mix it with that bullshit, I'm hoping not to join the twenty seven club." That reference — to the eerie number of musicians and other celebrities who've died at age 27  – ultimately didn't even apply to Miller. He didn't make it past 26.

Still, the musical legacy he leaves behind is an unusually rich one for such a young artist. The guy who'd been initially dismissed took it in stride and good humor and, in doing so, changed people's perception of him. As Diplo explained in Billboard , Miller "radiated positivity." For every lyric that foreshadowed his death, there are several that celebrated life.

In the year leading up to his death, Miller had been hard at work on his music, adding to an already prolific catalog. According to Rolling Stone , Miller was rehearsing for a tour promoting his well-received album  Swimming , and was hard at work. He was also dealing with fallout from his breakup with Ariana Grande and a subsequent arrest for DUI. By all accounts though, the message Miller was putting out to those who knew him was that he was "in a good place."

Mac Miller's death and its aftermath

After Miller's September overdose came an outpouring of affection from celebs you might expect (like Chance the Rapper thanking him for helping launch his career) and those, like Elton John (per Rolling Stone ), that may come as a surprise. Grande herself famously expressed her appreciation on the single "Thank U, Next," singing, "Wish I could say, 'Thank you' to Malcolm," referencing Miller's given name, "'Cause he was an angel."

But an overdose death is still an overdose and, in Miller's case, someone was going to pay. The BBC reports that three men have been charged for supplying Miller with the drugs that ultimately killed him. Reportedly, instead of the oxycodone Miller thought he'd been buying, the drugs he was sold instead contained lethal amounts of the much more powerful drug fentanyl.

Despite the Pittsburgh rapper's untimely death, Swimming , that album released just months before his death, has now gone platinum, says Hypebeast  – and thanks to Miller's prolific output, fans can probably expect more releases in the future.

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Music Features

Appreciating the unfinished legacy of mac miller.

Bobby Carter

Sidney Madden

An illustration of Mac Miller, drawn during his Tiny Desk Concert performance in Aug. 2018. Deborah Lee/NPR hide caption

An illustration of Mac Miller, drawn during his Tiny Desk Concert performance in Aug. 2018.

Last Friday, rapper and producer Mac Miller, born Malcolm James McCormick, was found dead in his San Fernando Valley home . His fans, who had heard Miller openly address drug use in interviews and in his music for years, immediately speculated that the cause was an overdose, though postmortem toxicology tests have not been released. Reactions to the news — from peers like Drake , Childish Gambino and J. Cole , relative newcomers like Ugly God and Lil Xan and titans from outside hip-hop like Elton John and Solange — were echoes of one another, invariably describing him as a sweet, easygoing individual with an innate gift for music.

Growing up in Pittsburgh, Mac Miller was trained in piano from the age of 6 and went on to teach himself drums, guitar and beat production. His earliest releases, especially his breakthrough 2010 mixtape K.I.D.S. on the Pittsburgh indie Rostrum Records, belied an appreciation for '90s boom-bap and an endearing, infectious and, at times, naive outlook on life. Above all else, his early work represented the fumbling freedom of adolescence — skipping school, finding a first love and dreams of getting rich through rap. But as he matured, on albums such as Watching Movies with the Sound Off , The Divine Feminine and this summer's Swimming , Miller experimented in R&B and funk and explored love, depression and candid honesty when it came to his own battles.

Mac Miller: Tiny Desk Concert

Tonight, a public vigil organized by Pittsburgh label Nightfall Records will be held at the city's Blue Slide Playground inside Frick Park, a frequent childhood hangout spot of Miller's that inspired the title and content of his debut album, 2011's Blue Slide Park . Miller's music will be played chronologically, interspersed with tributes from those whose lives he affected. Nightfall Records is inviting visual artists "to come and paint, create [and] draw live tribute art," and The Pittsburgh Post-Gazette reports that the playground's namesake slide has gotten a fresh coat of blue paint for the occasion.

The conversation below is a reflection on Miller's legacy from two NPR Music staffers: Sidney Madden, who covers hip-hop for the site, and Bobby Carter, who produced Miller's August Tiny Desk Concert, which would turn out to be one of the artist's final performances.

Bobby Carter: Mac and his team had just hopped off of a coast-to-coast flight, but were really eager to see the desk and to play. I've produced plenty of acts at the Tiny Desk where the artist wants to get into the green room, relax, or get into a zone right up until performance time. I understand and respect that approach, but Mac Miller was the polar opposite. They all arrived as a unit and exited their Sprinter giggling like high schoolers. Thundercat, who joined him on bass, had performed solo at the Desk just a few months prior, so he was able to brief Mac on what was to come and totally break the ice. I showed them to the green room, where he met the four string players for the first time, greeting them graciously. I carved out some extra space for Mac to get situated, but he wasn't interested. He wanted to get to the desk, and that's where they stayed. He told me that he was a little nervous — this was the first time they would perform these songs live.

Thundercat and Mac Miller after their Tiny Desk Concert performance. Eslah Attar/NPR hide caption

Thundercat and Mac Miller after their Tiny Desk Concert performance.

There was a very endearing dynamic between Mac and Thundercat on- and off-camera; they were constantly trying to one-up each other with the jokes. We literally had to hit 'pause' on the antics in order to get the instrumentation situated. Placing Thundercat on the shaker for the first song was a game-time decision that came from one of those jokes — if you look closely at the piano player, Javad Day and Mac during "Small Worlds," you'll catch them snickering as Thundercat opens up on that shaker!

Sidney Madden: I think the fact that he was so ready to get into the space and start rehearsing with the string players shows his commitment to his musicality and respect for live instrumentation — aside from his raps, that's always something that piqued my interest when I'd give any of his new records a first spin. I remember feeling so immersed in the horns and the layering of piano on Watching Movies with the Sound Off and The Divine Feminine . He was always someone I could count on for a different sound with each new record.

He always delivered dependably aching and honest albums — almost as if you could feel his eyes growing red from late studio sessions over the burden and, as far as sales, we kind of took that for granted. His debut album, Blue Slide Park, released independently under Rostrum Records, debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200, but after that, he had a period where it seemed his releases were always overshadowed by others, mostly because of release scheduling. 2013's Watching Movies with the Sound Off, after months of promo, got bumped to the No. 3 spot after its release because of Kanye West's Yeezus and J. Cole's Born Sinner . 2015's GO:OD AM suffered a similar fate, being bumped from No. 1 on release week in large part because of Drake and Future's surprise collab tape What A Time To Be Alive (which, let's face it, definitely hasn't aged as well as Mac's third studio album). In 2016, Mac was outdone by Drizzy again when his fourth studio album, The Divine Feminine , was bested by Views, which at that point had already been out for five months but jumped back to the No. 1 spot . His recently-released fifth album, Swimming , debuted at No. 3, falling behind Travis Scott, who dropped his third studio album Astroworld the same day — and Drake again , whose fifth album Scorpion has been in the Top 10 since being released in June.

Bobby, you were saying earlier how you think Swimming showcased his musicality hit a new peak?

Carter: I think so. He's always had unconventional musical ideas. Watching Movies had this wild psychedelic sound which was different but, at times, was all over the place. Divine Feminine had a much softer tone and was heavily driven by live instruments, but touched on one thing, love, throughout. Swimming reeled all that stuff in and was much more fluid than any other project in my opinion. Swimming just sounded free. We originally talked about a Tiny Desk performance during The Divine Feminine , but it never worked out until this album.

Madden: One of the reasons this death stands out to me so much is — though hip-hop has had a few unexpected deaths within the last year — he was someone you thought was in the clear, to a certain extent; he wasn't someone on the cusp of mainstream fame and he wasn't an OG on the other side of the hill.

Microphone Check

Mac miller on microphone check: 'it's ok to feel yourself'.

He was right in the middle of all of it — in the middle of his development as a musician, which is evident on his latest albums, but he was also in the middle of the spotlight, of the same class and caliber of MCs that are now some of the biggest names in rap. He came up in hip-hop's blog era, the same time J. Cole was dropping Friday Night Lights and Kendrick Lamar was dropping Overly Dedicated. Mac was in the 2011 XXL Freshman Class alongside Kendrick, Meek Mill, YG and Big K.R.I.T. — and at the time, he was one of the stars of that cover, because of the Internet fame surrounding his YouTube hits like " Donald Trump " and " Best Day Ever ."

And though he often got boxed into the short-lived subgenre of snarky frat rap, he didn't rest on his laurels. He honed his craft, on the mic and on the production side, which is why he earned the respect of so many in and outside of the hip-hop world.

Mac Miller performs a Tiny Desk Concert on Aug.1, 2018. Eslah Attar/NPR hide caption

Mac Miller performs a Tiny Desk Concert on Aug.1, 2018.

Carter: One of the hardest things to do in art, and maybe particularly in hip-hop, is to achieve huge success out the blocks and maintain it — there's usually a big dip in momentum at some point. If you get so big so fast, it can be hard to maintain that. The expectations can be hard to live up to. I don't think Mac worried about that. He never followed and he always did what he wanted to do musically, not what was in fashion. I think Mac Miller's strength was to carve out his lane and grow up with his fans. There's a true love between Mac and his fans and peers and we've seen that immediately following the tragic news.

Madden: And because he was in the middle, but was always so accessible and down to work with seemingly anyone, influencing a lot of the rappers we now consider the younger generation.

Carter: The doors he's opened for this younger generation can't be overstated. Mac put Chance The Rapper on his second tour ever; he took Rapsody and The Internet out, and on and on. Other than the music, i think that's the legacy he leaves behind. He always reached back to pull others up. Even up until his most recent tour, he was going to bring J.I.D on tour, who is just starting to gain notoriety.

Madden: The aspect of discovery was always something you would come to expect from a Mac Miller performance. Whether it was being put on to a new young act because he took them on tour as an opener or because of Mac himself re-energizing the audience with a guitar or drum solo in the middle of an interlude. The potential for surprises at his shows was unlimited.

Carter : I'm discovering more after his passing. I've already found him playing guitar and singing Oasis' " Wonderwal l" during one of his shows. There's a video of him playing Stevie Wonder's " Isn't She Lovely " on piano.

He left plenty of proof of his musical brilliance, but there's going to be lots more talk about how nice Mac Miller was as a person. We tend to highlight the great qualities once we lose someone, but I can say for certain that there's no embellishment when we speak about Mac Miller. We saw that up close. It's hard to lose that light when we so desperately need more of it. He was the real deal.

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The Tragic Death of Mac Miller, a Musician Who Never Stopped Evolving

By Doreen St. Félix

On Friday afternoon, the rapper and producer Mac Miller was found dead in his San Fernando Valley home. He was just twenty-six years old. TMZ, which has in the past decade perfected a crude art of celebrity death-chasing, broke the news; fans speculated that the artist, who spoke publicly about his struggles with addiction, had died of an accidental overdose. (A statement by Miller’s family did not name the cause of death.) In the last video that Miller shot, for “Self Care,” an existential spiral of a song from his latest album, “Swimming,” Miller is lying in his own coffin, puffing on a cigarette, carving “ Memento Mori ” into its wooden ceiling, seeming nonplussed by it all.

The song’s drowsy beat makes an unexpected lurch, near the end, turning from claustrophobic to weightless: Miller is now singing of “oblivion, yeah, yeah, yeah.” In the video, he bursts from his premature tomb, in a cloud of earth and dust, and floats up into the atmosphere. It’s not a force as neat or definitive as hope that is propelling Miller upward. As he evolved—and he never stopped evolving—he became a bard of post-adolescent rootlessness, comfortable in a tense, liminal space between fear and awe. “Swimming,” released in August, was a dispatch from a young man embracing his own mysteries. The album seemed to invite an eventual follow-up, a chronicling of the adrift artist reaching some shore. He was supposed to start a tour in October.

Just this past week, Miller had seemed tenderly alive. On Thursday, Vulture published a hybrid profile and interview by the music journalist Craig Jenkins. Miller discussed the HBO documentary “The Zen Diaries of Garry Shandling” (“He was always writing the words, ‘Just be Garry.’ ‘Just be Garry.’ And that shit struck a chord with me”) and the expectations placed on artists by their fans (“It’s annoying to be out and have someone come up to me and think they know. They’re like ‘Yo, man, are you okay?’ I’m like ‘Yeah, I’m fucking at the grocery store.’ ”). He also touched, indirectly, on the topic of depression. “I really wouldn’t want just happiness,” he said. “And I don’t want just sadness either.”

Earnestness marked Miller’s career from the start. Born Malcolm McCormick, he was raised in Pittsburgh by a photographer mother and an architect father. He took piano lessons, quickly taught himself the guitar and the drums, and started rapping at the age of fourteen. “I was known as being this little white kid who could rap,” Miller told The Fader , in a cover story from 2013. “When I was fifteen I used to walk my ass to East Liberty and be in ciphers with motherfuckers twice my age.” At fifteen, he formed a duo called The Ill Spoken with his friend Brian Benjamin Green, who is known as Beedie. In interviews, Miller rejected the affected ahistoricism of some of his scrappy peers and spoke rapturously of his admiration for hip-hop classicists like Big L and A Tribe Called Quest.

His early mixtapes, though charming, were insouciant and scattershot, showing few glimmers of the lyrical invention he’d develop in time. He sold music out of his trunk while still in high school. In 2010, having netted a few viral hits, he signed a four-year contract with Rostrum Records. The first mixtape released under Rostrum, “K.I.D.S.,” blew up. For his geniality, his easy commerciality, and his whiteness, Miller was swiftly labelled a “frat rapper”—an unofficial taxon used, semi-pejoratively, to describe performers deemed to be not quite stealing hip-hop from its black creators but using its essence to reflect their blithe realities. In 2011, his first studio album, “Blue Slide Park,” became the first independent album to début at No. 1 on the Billboard Hot 100 since 1995. Yet Pitchfork gave it a brutal 1.0 rating, calling it a “crushingly bland and intolerable version of Wiz Khalifa,” Miller’s fellow Pittsburgh labelmate.

The frat-rap subgenre did not endure. But Miller did, and he outgrew the juvenilia that had secured his stardom. Gradually, Miller’s technical prowess sharpened, his lyrical reserve expanded, and his producer’s touch crystallized. He got rich, grew a reddish beard, and bought a mansion in the Valley. In 2013, under the pseudonym Larry Fisherman, he produced the entirety of Vince Staples’s sublime “Stolen Youth”; his home became a hang-out spot for his generation’s most gifted rappers and musicians, from Earl Sweatshirt and Lil B to Anderson .Paak and Thundercat. (The house was also the setting for the short-lived, rambunctious reality-TV show “Mac Miller and the Most Dope Family.”) Miller, developing melodic flows and a deliberately clouded way of articulating his anguish, was earning a place among their ranks.

Miller and I are the same age. In my late teens, I blissed out to his early tapes even as I ragged on them, feeling contentedly aimless in a cramped apartment in a cold, small city. I wasn’t a part of the cult of Miller, but I accepted his ubiquity as harmless, assuming that he would come and go as quickly as the post-racial promise that briefly captivated my generation. But by the time Miller’s jazz and funk record “The Divine Feminine” was released, in 2016, I started to think that he would one day release a masterpiece. The goofy white boy had grown poetic, perhaps even a little spiritual. The heat of a revved-up creative collaborator radiated from the work. The album, about witnessing “the feminine energy of the planet,” as he once said, could have seemed like one long masculine slobber; instead, it was a sincere meditation on how romantic attraction can disable a person’s defenses. How did Miller elicit such sexual honesty from Kendrick Lamar, who usually becomes awkward on the subject, on the album’s closer, “God is Fair, Sexy Nasty?” “Hearts on my timeline / bullet to your rose,” the two croon together.

Honesty was Miller’s default. He stumbled and learned in public, even as the intensity of the public glare increased his pain. His eyebrows seemed curved in perpetual, boyish inquiry. His creative process was as depleting as it was generative; he did not always emerge whole after writing of his addiction and rehabilitations, his anxieties, his presages of death. He spoke about the perils of using music as therapy. But his frankness about his struggles could never be mistaken as glorifying them, or as resignation. Miller was working through it. “I’d rather be the corny white rapper than the drugged-out mess who can’t even get out his house,” he told The Fader , in a documentary . “Overdosing is just not cool. You don’t go down in history because you overdose. You just die.”

Thousands of tributes have been written in the wake of Miller’s death. The most desperate of our cultural platitudes about addiction and depression have been trotted out, as they were when Demi Lovato overdosed earlier this summer, when Lil Peep died late last year. We have gotten somewhat beyond decrying addiction as a moral failing. But there is still a tendency to categorize it as an individual deviance rather than a systemic failure . Miller’s ex-girlfriend, the pop star Ariana Grande, broke up with him in part because of his addiction. She has been attacked on social media in recent days for being the “reason” that Miller died. Well-meaning but hollow viral tweets exhorting us to “check on our friends” forget the shame associated with speaking up about illness, the invisibility that can accompany debilitating dependency. Certain rap forecasters have devised a terse formulation to explain the burgeoning class of “ sad rappers ”: the men of the nineties were rational drug dealers, they say, whereas their inheritors are weakling addicts. The hierarchy, the dog-eat-dog equilibrium that it implies, is false, and Miller, obliquely, was seeking to dismantle it.

In June of last year, on the occasion of becoming the first rapper to be inducted into the Rock and Roll Hall of Fame, Jay-Z tweeted a list of all the m.c.s, young and old, who had left a mark on him in some way. His messages were endearingly erratic, composed as if he’d hardly ever touched a keyboard: “Too many ..Fab , black people really magic . Mac Miller nice too though .” Miller had the tweet framed in his home. “Nice” embodied how associates and fans thought of him. He was known to secretly foot bills, to grant interview requests to cub reporters with fake press passes, and to generally crowd those around him with genuine concern and friendliness. This fundamental decency is one reason his premature death is so painful. But the word, as Jay-Z used it, was a different kind of appreciation. He meant that the kid was nice —deft in ways that surprised you, in ways that made you hungry to see what he’d dream up next. It is a tragedy that Miller won’t get to keep growing.

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Anderson .Paak, Chance The Rapper, Miguel & More To Honor Mac Miller With Tribute Concert

As the world continues to mourn the loss of the young rapper, artists of various genres unite to honor and celebrate him at a special show on Oct. 31 in Los Angeles

There is no doubt that the world dearly misses the late rapper Mac Miller . Many artists across genres have paid tribute to him since his untimely passing at age 26 on Sept. 7. The tributes will continue with a star-studded concert set to celebrate his life, featuring many of artists who have shown him love, including Anderson .Paak , Chance the Rapper , Miguel and many more. The special show will be held in Los Angeles at the Greek Theater on Oct. 31, Miller's family has announced.

The stellar lineup features an impressive variety of artists who loved the young rapper, including Anderson .Paak, Miguel, Earl Sweatshirt ,  Schoolboy Q ,  Thundercat , Vince Staples, Action Bronson and Ty Dolla Sign, all of whom collaborated with him at some point. Others who will perform in his honor include Chance the Rapper, who went from being a big fan to close friend of Miller's—Miller brought him on tour when he was first starting out. Additionally, John Mayer , SZA , Travis Scott , Domo Genesis of Odd Future, Dylan Reynolds, J.I.D and Njomza are on the bill. The proceeds will benefit the newly established Mac Miller Circles Foundation, created by the rapper's brother in his memory to bring the arts to underserved youth. Miller's mother, Karen Myers, who helped organize the concert, reflected on the positivity shining through for the upcoming show and the new foundation established in his name.

"The support we've experienced is evident in this amazing lineup and is a testament to Malcolm's incredible life. His father, brother and I are beyond thankful to everyone who is working to make this concert happen along with every fan and every friend for continuing to support Malcolm and his vision," Myers shared in a recent statement . "He was a caring, loving human with a smile that could light up the sky and a soul that was out to make the world a kinder place and the MMCF will continue to do just that."

As a silver-lining to the dark spot his death left, the dedications, shout-outs and love musicians and fans alike have shown for him since then has been truly heartwarming, and shows the positive impact the young rapper had on so many lives. His legacy will live on in his music and within the people he positively impacted who share that light. Staples posted a shout-out to him on the day of his passing, quoting one of Miller's verses on a song they collaborated on, "Heaven." "'I must've died and went to heaven...currently in shock it'll hit me in a second. What's your question? You need a blessing right? Or you just wondering what heavens like.' I’ll see you soon. Thank you for everything...for all of this. I love you," he shared on Instagram.

Tickets for the tribute concert go on sale this Friday Oct. 5. More information on tickets to the show, as well the Mac Miller Circles Fund, can be found  here .

Fiona Apple: "I Wanted To Stay Friends With Him And I Never Got His Number"

Photo: Ro.lexx

On 'Heavy,' SiR Wants People To See The Weight Of His Humanity

In an interview with GRAMMY.com, the TDE singer opens up about his new album, overcoming addiction, and how he leaned on his labelmates to carve a new path forward.

SiR admits that a good chunk of his past five years were a blur. Following the release of his last album, 2019’s Chasing Summer , the singer fell into a deep depression. To cope, he began to "self-medicate," which ultimately spiraled into addiction.

The Inglewood, California native isn’t the first artist under L.A. powerhouse label Top Dawg Entertainment (TDE) to struggle with mental and physical health. Isaiah Rashad , Ab-Soul and ScHoolboy Q have all experienced their own bouts with addiction and depression; however, all three have also found their way back to their art, releasing critically acclaimed come-back albums in the past few years. SiR is the latest example of Black male resilience amongst TDE artists. 

On his new album, Heavy (out March 22), the 37-year-old singer documents his life’s ups and downs. The record is "as personal as I’ll ever get in my music," he says over Zoom from his home in Inglewood. 

Sir Darryl Farris grew up in a musical family. His mother sang background for Chaka Khan and Michael Jackson back in the day, and urged SiR and his brothers — rapper D Smoke and fellow R&B singer Davion Farris — to sing in church every Sunday during their adolescence. While becoming a musician wasn’t an obvious career path, SiR rediscovered his passion in his early 20s and locked in.

The singer released his debut album, Seven Sundays , independently in 2015. He signed with TDE two years later and released the critically acclaimed November in 2018. Chasing Summer followed in 2019 and, together, the albums underscored him as a missing piece in the neo-soul/R&B landscape. Songs like "D’Evils," "Something New" (feat. Etta Bond), "John Redcorn" and "Hair Down" (feat. former labelmate Kendrick Lamar ) especially showcased SiR's soulful storytelling and overall vibe. 

"My life experiences helped shape how I write songs," he told GRAMMY.com in 2019 . "I appreciate my time away from music, but also I'm glad I found my way back because I don't know what I'd be if I wasn't a musician."

This time around, SiR found his way back to music in a more transformative way. Shortly after revealing his addiction to his wife in 2021, he checked into rehab and began the process of getting clean. Despite relapsing twice in 2022, as of writing this, SiR is a year and three months sober. He still dabbles with marijuana but is on a new path forward — forgiving himself along the way. "Finding sobriety, in my opinion, means finding your own version of it. I’m healthy and that’s what matters," he shares.

SiR recently earned his first two GRAMMY nominations at this year’s ceremony; Best R&B Song and Best R&B Performance for his collaboration with Alex Isley and Robert Glasper on the latter’s "Back to Love." SiR spoke to GRAMMY.com about creating his new album, overcoming his vices and how he leaned on his support system, including his labelmates, to carve a new path forward.

I was told that you struggled with an addiction in between releasing 2019’s Chasing Summer and now. Walk me through the ups and downs of your last five years.

I try not to go into detail as far as naming what I was actually going through because I don’t give my [drug of choice] power, and that’s just my personal thing. But I was a full-blown addict, and it started from a string of depression [and] relationship issues and issues at home that I wasn’t dealing with. Living one way when I’m actually built a different way. I started to self-medicate, let’s call it that, and it became an issue right around Chasing Summer and a full-blown problem heading into 2020, right before COVID. 

At the time, my wife was pregnant and it was too much [for me] to handle so I reached out for help [and] I had a strong support system around me. It took about a year, year and a half before I actually figured it out. But as of right now… I’m back at home with my family, and through all of this, I was creating. I love what I do and it’s part of how I pay my bills, so I tried to stay as busy as possible. By 2022, I was looking at the [track]list that I was accruing as I was trying to get sober, and noticed a throughline of my personal life struggles on wax. 

I did a great job of diving deep, as far as my own personal issues. I kinda did that [by] accident this time around and after about a year of changing the playlist — taking songs off, putting new songs on — we finally got to a place where we fell in love and started doing all the work towards preparing to release the album.

At what point were you like OK, I need to get it together ?

I couldn’t really hide the fact that I was sick at a certain point. My wife couldn't tell what it was. She thought I was sick, like, physically. I would wake up throwing up, it was an ongoing thing for a few weeks when I was at the worst. It just got to a point where it wasn’t a secret to anybody else. 

Tough questions came out and I was ready to talk about it, I just didn’t know how. It’s such an embarrassing thing for a lot of people, you know? Once the cat was out of the bag, it was a lot easier for me to accept help and really try to work through what I needed to work through. 

When did you go to rehab?

The first time? [Laughs.] I was there for 21 days [in 2021]. [The] second time, I was there for two months and the third time wasn’t technically rehab; we took my phone [and] keys and put them in a locked room type situation. I did personal therapy, and, man, [that] did wonders. There’s that stigma that our community has on therapy and I would’ve never done something like that if I was in any other position, so I’m thankful for my issues because they led me to a lot of self-reflection and forgiveness. 

I think the only reason why I was sick for so long is because I wasn’t able to forgive myself for all of the mistakes that I had made and I wasn’t addressing the real issue, which was my depression. Once those things worked themselves out, it was all light from there and we were heading forward. [But] once an addict, always an addict — I had slip-ups. I was committed to being sober but I had two relapses that kinda set me back in 2022. I had a great 2023, started this year off strong, ended 2023 off strong with music and [I] wanna keep that going. 

I tell people all the time, I’m so sick of talking about this. We had to shoot a documentary the last couple of days and I had to fake doing drugs and fake getting drunk for the visual, and it’s very beautiful and artistic, [but] that kind of stuff has been uncomfortable. Even this conversation. It’s not uncomfortable for me, but it’s tough because I have to be honest and it’s important for me to tell my side of the story. 

I understand it’s tough and I appreciate you opening up about this. How did you find the strength to create through these low points?

The playlist that we have was pretty much done [at] the end of 2022 when we dropped "Nothing Even Matters." We were ready to go but I wasn’t sober. One thing about [TDE CEO Anthony "Top Dawg" Tiffith] is he protects people. He doesn’t care about when things happen as far as the music industry, he knows we’re gifted beyond the situations that we be in. He wants to make sure that he protects us as people so that our careers are built around longevity — and he won’t let me drop nothing unless it’s ready. 

And I’m glad that last mess up happened because it gave us time to really, really decide to put the right stuff on this playlist, and I had another six months to just chisel down. I added two songs back in that weren’t gonna be on the project. "Only Human" is an eight-year-old song, but it wasn’t going to be on there. "Tryin’ My Hardest" wasn’t gonna be on there but I put them back on and I changed the playlist up, got a couple extra features and I’m glad it worked out.

How have you leaned on your labelmates through your low points and what were those conversations like?

The conversations are always love because the situations are very similar. Circumstances are different but the solution was all the same. We were all going to our own different vices, but I talked to Ab-Soul a lot and leaned on him to get my mind right. When I was going through what I was going through, it was the same time he was going through what he was going through, and I didn’t know it. 

We started talking candidly about our experiences, which helps while you’re in the addiction, and it became a normal thing. Eventually, we both got to a point where we were healthy-minded and the conversation shifted. We don’t talk about that kind of stuff anymore but he was instrumental in pulling my mind away from the worst of it. 

Same with Zay [Isaiah Rashad]. Me and Zay was watching each other struggle. [Laughs.] It’s beautiful to see somebody win but it’s even more beautiful to see your brother make it back. Even [ScHoolboy] Q, whenever I seen him, it was all love. I was showing up places messed up and they always showed me the same respect and that went a long way.

Was collabing with Isaiah and Ab-Soul intentional, then?

Yes and no. I’m a fan of their music and everybody knows I’m a huge Ab-Soul fan, but these were the songs that were created in the turmoil and they fit for everyone. It was easy for us to write these things, especially "Karma" where me and Zay both were in the midst of the worst, and "I’m Not Perfect" was easy for Soul to gravitate towards because of the message, he understood it. 

That’s the beautiful thing about TDE, we all know what each other [is] capable of. Looking back, I think we’re blessed to have been in similar circumstances at the same time because the music wouldn’t sound the same if it was any other way.

What does the title Heavy mean to you?

This album is literally the most personal I’ll ever be. I don’t want to be in this kind of pain ever again. It’s as personal as I’ll ever get in my music. When I hear the word "heavy" I think of pressure and weight. With this album, I feel like I was under so much pressure as I was writing the songs — all I could do was make diamonds. These songs are all their own little diamonds of my writing, they’re stories that come from me, they’re born from my mistakes. 

It feels heavy. When I listen to the music, I feel the things I was going through weighing me down. When I perform it, it feels like I got on 300 pounds. This is four years coming. Five years since the [last] album but four years [that] I’ve been trying to get myself back to where I need to be to drop this. It’s the perfect title for what you’re hearing.

Why did you decide to drop "No Evil" and "Karma" as the first two singles?

Everything’s a team effort. We played the music until we were sick of it and whatever songs we were sick of the least, those were the ones that we wanted to work on. 

"No Evil" kept surprising us. The more we played it, the more we were like, "This s— is undeniable." It has so many things going for it. If people [are] just really willing to listen to it, it might do something. With "Karma," that was like …let’s just give [the fans] something that’s straight down the middle.

Why the decision for the D’Angelo homage in the "No Evil" video? Was that to show off your fitness transformation?

I think it was more so [the latter] than D’Angelo. The shot was something the director suggested, but it was more so my big reveal. I’ve been working on myself and part of the thing that I was going through the most was my weight gain. I got up to 250lbs and nobody was really saying anything. [While I was] trying to get sober, I had a lot of time to figure out my dieting and that’s what really helped get me down to the weight I’m at now.

The ode to D’Angelo, I didn’t really see until we started editing the video. I’m on the [other] side of the camera so I had no idea that we were going that far. I’m like, Hell yeah. My shirt’s off, I’m buff as f– that’s all that mattered to me. [Laughs.] Anytime I can pay homage to anybody like D’Angelo that helped shape me as an artist, I won’t hesitate to. 

"Ricky’s Song" also stands out to me because it sounds like you’re talking to someone. Walk me through the inspiration behind that.

I literally was talking to my nephew Ricky, that’s my n—. Ricky is 20 now. I wrote that right when he was going into his senior year. To me, it’s a Black love story, a love story that you don’t hear everyday. It’s my family and that’s how we take care of each other: through the lessons that we learn. On the song right before this, "Life Is Good," there’s an interlude where my dad tells a story about a robbery that he committed back in the day. He was telling us these stories because he wants us to know all the mistakes he’s made in his life so we don’t go through the same stuff. That’s where the line in "Ricky’s Song": "You learned from me, don’t wanna see you make the same mistakes," [comes from]. 

That’s why that song is so important to me and for other people to hear. It’s OK to love your family and nurture them. Me and Ricky’s relationship is so strong. That man is the coolest. [He’s] my workout partner, video game partner, we play "Call of Duty" all day together and we talk all the time, constantly encouraging and lifting each other up, giving each other advice from the other perspective because I’m 37 and he’s 20. I can learn so much more from him than he can learn from me in certain instances because he’s watching the world happening in his time, and I don’t see it like that and I never will, we’re in two different places. I definitely brush off on him and vice versa. He keeps me young.

What do you want listeners to take away from Heavy ?

It’s OK to be vulnerable. We all go through things, it’s just about how you handle them, being honest about it with yourself and the people around you. I want people to see my humanity because a lot of times it feels like as artists, we’re put in these places and expectations are set for us and if we don’t abide by them, we can lose our whole career or we can get too lost in the image of what we’re supposed to be. I want people to see that I’m normal, I’m very human when you meet me. I’m regular and I love that part of my life. SiR is great but SiR is a job. It’s a career that can end, but my life is my life and I want people to recognize that it’s a blessing to get music from artists.

I want people that are going through similar situations to hear that I was crying for help in these instances and to know that it’s OK to ask for help. That’s the biggest thing with addiction and drug use: People are so embarrassed or ashamed that they won’t reach out to the person that wants to help them. For people that are watching someone go through this, take some of the pressure off yourself because…an addict will never get help until they choose to help themselves. So all you can do is support, give love and help in any way you can. 

Danielle Ponder's Powerful Song Of Reckoning: How The Singer/Songwriter Melds The Personal & Historical On "Manhunt" Theme

Photo: Kevin Mazur/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

GRAMMY Rewind: Watch Doja Cat & SZA Tearfully Accept Their First GRAMMYs For "Kiss Me More"

Relive the moment the pair's hit "Kiss Me More" took home Best Pop Duo/Group Performance, which marked the first GRAMMY win of their careers.

As Doja Cat put it herself, the 2022 GRAMMYs were a "big deal" for her and SZA .

Doja Cat walked in with eight nominations, while SZA entered the ceremony with five. Three of those respective nods were for their 2021 smash "Kiss Me More," which ultimately helped the superstars win their first GRAMMYs.

In this episode of GRAMMY Rewind , revisit the night SZA and Doja Cat accepted the golden gramophone for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance — a milestone moment that Doja Cat almost missed.

"Listen. I have never taken such a fast piss in my whole life," Doja Cat quipped after beelining to the stage. "Thank you to everybody — my family, my team. I wouldn't be here without you, and I wouldn't be here without my fans."

Before passing the mic to SZA, Doja also gave a message of appreciation to the "Kill Bill" singer: "You are everything to me. You are incredible. You are the epitome of talent. You're a lyricist. You're everything."

SZA began listing her praises for her mother, God, her supporters, and, of course, Doja Cat. "I love you! Thank you, Doja. I'm glad you made it back in time!" she teased.

"I like to downplay a lot of s— but this is a big deal," Doja tearfully concluded. "Thank you, everybody."

Press play on the video above to hear Doja Cat and SZA's complete acceptance speech for Best Pop Duo/Group Performance at the 2022 GRAMMY Awards, and check back to GRAMMY.com for more new episodes of GRAMMY Rewind.

How 'SOS' Transformed SZA Into A Superstar & Solidified Her As The Vulnerability Queen

Photo: Amy Sussman/Getty Images

10 Acceptance Speeches That Made Us Laugh, Cry, & Smile At The 2024 GRAMMYs

From Taylor Swift's record-shattering Album Of The Year win, to Killer Mike and boygenius category sweeps, these are the emotional GRAMMY winning moments that made up Music's Biggest Night.

Glitz, glamor, and great performances from legendary musicians are only part of what make the GRAMMYs Music’s Biggest Night. It’s also an occasion to honor the music industry’s best and brightest, highlight their greatest achievements from the past year, and watch them soak up the glory. 

Some of the night’s biggest moments came when artists accepted their GRAMMY trophies, from Taylor Swift announcing her next album to teary-eyed moments from SZA and Best New Artist Victoria Monét . Here are a few of our favorite acceptance speeches from the 2024 GRAMMYs. 

Killer Mike Sweeps With Three GRAMMYs In A Row

Atlanta rapper Killer Mike had already given a moving speech upon winning Best Rap Performance for “Scientists & Engineers,” saying “I want to thank everyone who dares to believe that art can change the world.” But his third and final win, Best Rap Album for Michael , sent him into another dimension: “It’s a sweep! Atlanta, it’s a sweep!” 

Tyla Was Shocked To Win Best African Performance

Although her hit song “Water” has dominated the charts, even Tyla was caught off guard by her Best African Music Performance win – the first ever awarded in this category – exclaiming “What the heck?!” The South African star continued "This is crazy, I never thought I’d say I won a GRAMMY at 22 years old."

Boygenius Sweep The Rock Categories

Boygenius already had something to celebrate when Phoebe Bridgers won a GRAMMY for her collab with SZA. They went on to win three categories during the Premiere Ceremony – Best Rock Song, Best Rock Performance, and Best Rock Album – enabling each member of the trio to give a separate speech. “We were all delusional enough as kids to think this might happen someday,” Lucy Dacus said. 

Miley Cyrus Was A Class Act

Accepting the prize for Best Pop Solo Performance for “Flowers,” Miley Cyrus took to the stage to strike a pose with presenter Mariah Carey – “This M.C. is gonna stand by this M.C.” — before launching into a story about a boy who tries desperately to catch a butterfly, before nabbing one when they least expect it. “This song ‘Flowers’ is my butterfly,” she concluded. 

SZA Runs From Backstage To Accept Award

Changing backstage after her GRAMMYs performance , SZA was caught off guard when “Snooze” won Best R&B Song. She embraced friend and presenter Lizzo before giving an emotional, funny speech. “I can’t believe this is happening, and it feels very fake,” she said. “I love you, I’m not an attractive cryer, have a good evening.” 

Taylor Swift Announces New Album

When the pop mega-star took to the stage to accept her lucky 13th overall GRAMMY for Best Pop Vocal Album ( Midnights ), she decided to use the moment to give her fans the ultimate gift, announcing her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department , will release on April 19. “I want to say thank you by telling you a secret that I've been keeping from you for the past two years,” she said. 

Billie Eilish Didn’t Know What To Say

After delivering a lovely performance of her Barbie movie ballad “What Was I Made For?,” Billie Eilish wasn’t exactly at a loss for words when the track won Song of the Year . The words that came out of her mouth were a bit less than rehearsed, however: “Whoa, whoops, yikes, whoa my goodness! Damn, that’s stupid guys!” she said. “I don’t even know what to say, I’m shocked out of my balls.” 

Victoria Monét Delivers Tearful, Eloquent Speech

Through tears of joy, Best New Artist winner Victoria Monét gave a speech worthy of an artist who spent years writing for others before striking out on her own. “This award was a 15-year pursuit,” she said, going on to compare herself to a plant growing in the soil of the music industry. “My roots have been growing underneath ground, unseen, for so long, and I feel like today I’m sprouting, finally above ground.” 

Miley Cyrus Makes An Even Wilder Record of the Year Speech

Cyrus returned to the stage twice after her first GRAMMY win, first to perform her award-winning song , and then once more to accept a second golden gramophone for Record of the Year. “This award is amazing, but I really hope it doesn’t change anything, because my life was beautiful yesterday,” she said. Then she ended the speech by saying “I don’t think I’ve forgotten anyone, but I might’ve forgotten underwear!”

Taylor Swift’s Record-Shattering Album of the Year

Lightning struck twice for Taylor Swift, as the evening ended with her taking home a record-breaking fourth GRAMMY for Album of the Year ( Midnights ), more than any other artist in GRAMMY history. Flanked by producer Jack Antonoff and friend and collaborator Lana Del Rey , she gave a speech that highlighted her passion for music-making, saying  “For me the award is the work. All I wanna do is keep being able to do this. I love it so much, it makes me so happy." As happy as Swift was, her fans probably left even happier. 

9 Ways Women Dominated The 2024 GRAMMYs

Photo by Johnny Nunez/Getty Images for The Recording Academy

From Taylor Swift and Tyla's historic wins, to Miley Cyrus' first GRAMMYs and Joni Mitchell's first performance, the 66th GRAMMY Awards put ladies first.

Women shined particularly bright at Music's Biggest Night this year. As Trevor Noah put it in his monologue: "There’s a band that has already won today called boygenius , it’s three women. That’s how good a year it is for women."

Beyond boygenius' first GRAMMY wins, the conversation about female artists' legacy at the 2024 GRAMMYs had been building since the nominations were announced, when it was revealed that seven of the eight nominees for Album Of The Year were women. The majority of the performers for the 66th GRAMMY Awards were also women, including the legendary Joni Mitchell , Billie Eilish , SZA , and Dua Lipa . And several female artists were on the precipice of making history (chief among them, Taylor Swift , who later became the first ever four-time winner of Album Of The Year.

The results of the ceremony were no less centered on the ladies. At the Premiere Ceremony, Julien Baker , Phoebe Bridgers , and Lucy Dacus won three of the six Rock Categories for their work as boygenius . Lainey Wilson nabbed Best Country Album, Joni Mitchell won Best Folk Album, and Victoria Monét won Best R&B Album and Best New Artist. Gaby Moreno , Karol G and Tyla nabbed trophies as well.

As the night went on, that tally continued. In fact, other than Producer Of The Year and Songwriter Of Year, a woman won every category in the General Field, including Billie Eilish 's "What Was I Made For?" winning Song of the Year and Taylor Swift's Midnights pulling off the big fourth Album Of The Year win.

From every corner of the room, Music’s Biggest Night was filled with powerful women taking the spotlight. Here are eight moments where women ruled the 2024 GRAMMYs — with no sign of this reign ending.

Taylor Swift Hits Lucky Number 13 (And 14, Too)

While it’s true that Taylor Swift’s name has been at the center of what feels like 98 percent of music in the past year, and that continued at the 2024 GRAMMYs. Much speculation ahead of the 66th GRAMMY Awards came down to whether she would make history by winning her fourth Album Of The Year award.

Adding to the excitement, the iconic Celine Dion surprised the world and took the stage to announce the winner for the night’s final award, and it happened: "Taylor Swift."

Rather than bask in her own glory, Swift seemed shocked, fumbling to get a high-five and hug connected with close friend and uber-producer Jack Antonoff . And her acceptance speech made it clear that while she appreciated and was honored by the award, she wasn’t about to rest on any laurels, no matter how massive they may be.

"I would love to tell you that this is the best moment of my life, but I feel this happy when I finish a song, or when I crack the code to a bridge I love, or when I'm shot-listing a music video, or when I'm rehearsing with my dancers or my band, or getting ready to go to Tokyo to play a show," she said. "For me the award is the work. All I wanna do is keep being able to do this. I love it so much, it makes me so happy."

True to that word, the evening also featured Swift announcing a new album — after Midnights won Best Pop Vocal Album (her lucky number 13th GRAMMY) earlier in the night, Swift made the surprise announcement that she’d be releasing her 11th studio album, The Tortured Poets Department , on April 19.

There was something inspiring, too, about the way Swift got to the stage — practically yanking Lana Del Rey from her seat at the same table, demanding she join her onstage. "I think so many female artists would not be where they are and would not have the inspiration they have if it weren’t for the work that she’s done," Swift told the assembly. "She’s a legacy artist, a legend in her prime right now."

Always a booster of other women in the industry, of course she had to share the spotlight even with her history-making fourth Album Of The Year award in hand.

Tracy Chapman Returns To The GRAMMY Stage

Sure, it was Luke Combs nominated for Best Country Solo Performance, but he made it crystal clear that he was there because of Tracy Chapman .

"That was my favorite song before I even knew what a favorite song was," he said in a video package prior to his performance, evocatively describing trips in his dad’s pickup truck, Chapman’s self-titled debut on the cassette player. Combs loved the song so much, he explained, that he wanted to put a cover of it on his 2023 album, Gettin' Old .

He went on to laud its universal appeal, the way Chapman’s chorus gets full-throated sing-alongs no matter the listener’s background — a powerful message, considering that Combs’ recording winning the Country Music Awards' Song Of The Year award made Chapman the first Black woman to receive that honor. "To be associated with her in any way is super humbling for me," Combs said.

The show transitioned from that heartfelt praise directly to Chapman’s hand on her guitar neck, picking out that iconic acoustic riff. Thirty-five years after its initial release, there was Chapman again on the GRAMMYs stage, this time dueting with a country star clearly in awe of sharing her space, mouthing along with the lines he wasn’t singing. It was an unforgettable performance, astonishing in its ability to pull us all out of our bodies and into the spirit of music.

The Endless Allure Of SZA

"Nobody got more nominations this year than SZA," Trevor Noah announced during his opening monologue — and that was after the experimental R&B artist born Solana Rowe had already won two GRAMMYs at the Premiere Ceremony earlier in the evening.

SZA had many more special moments left in the night. She performed a section of the GRAMMY-nominated "Snooze" in a black trenchcoat and hat, and the blade-wielding rebuke triggered the transition to another smash hit from 2022’s SOS : "Kill Bill". The cinematic performance featured a squad of leather-clad woman assassins slicing and dicing a series of men in suits, as SZA effortlessly walked the stage to deliver the world’s sweetest anthem centered on homicide. (For the record, the sight of Phoebe Bridgers’ outright glee at the sight of a sword-wielding dancer standing on her table at the song’s outset has to go down as one of the night’s best moments.)

Later, she would take home the GRAMMY for Best R&B Song for "Snooze" — her tally of three awards tying for the second largest of any artist at the 66th GRAMMY Awards. SZA was handed the golden gramophone by Lizzo , the two women clearly sharing a special moment.

"Lizzo and I have been friends since 2013 when we were both on a tiny Red Bull tour, opening up in small rooms for like 100 people. And to be on the stage with her is so amazing, I’m so grateful," SZA said after sprinting onstage, having just changed out of her performance attire. The tearful, brief acceptance speech that followed showed the incredibly honest and passionate person — and performer — that she is.

Boygenius Win Their First GRAMMY Awards

For a trio of badasses like boygenius , one or two GRAMMYs just wouldn’t do. They needed an award apiece: Best Rock Performance, Best Alternative Music Album, and Best Rock Song (all handed to them by queer icon Rufus Wainwright , no less). Julien Baker, Phoebe Bridgers, and Lucy Dacus sprinted down the aisle in their matching white suits at the Premiere Ceremony, giddy, shocked, together.

Befitting the trio’s history — both together and separately — as brilliant writers and lyricists, each had their own memorable line. 

"Music saved my life. Everyone can be in a band, this band is my family," Baker said, beaming after they won the Best Rock Performance award. "We were all delusional enough as kids to think that this might happen to us one day," Dacus said with a laugh. But just two days after the public announcement that the band was going on hiatus to focus on their own solo projects, it was this quick aside from Bridgers during their acceptance for Best Rock Song that brought the warmth: "I owe these boys everything. I love you guys so much." 

Tyla Makes Africa Proud

Trevor Noah may have been the host, but he wasn't the only one bringing South African flavor to the 2024 GRAMMYs.

"What the heck!?" Tyla said earlier in the evening at the Premiere Ceremony, grinning as her Johannesburg accent dripping with gleeful shock. At just 22 years old and a month out from even releasing her debut studio album, the viral pop star was nominated in the stacked inaugural Category of Best African Music Performance , including Asake & Olamide , Burna Boy , Davido and Musa Keys , and Ayra Starr . But it was Tyla’s "Water" — an amapiano-driven pop instant classic — that took home the award.

The song had already made history, as the first South African single to reach the Billboard Hot 100 since jazz legend Hugh Masekela achieved that feat in 1968, not to mention that the song reaching number seven made Tyla the highest-charting African female solo musician in Billboard history. 

"If you don’t know me, my name is Tyla, I’m from South Africa, and last year God decided to change my whole life," she said, the glow of the GRAMMY gold radiating on her face.

Annie Lennox Knows We Are Never Forgotten

The In Memoriam segment inevitably provides some of the most touching moments of any GRAMMY Awards. But every once in a while, a truly special performance will stand out amidst the heartache. Such was the case with Annie Lenox ’s tear-stained performance of "Nothing Compares 2 U" from the late Sinéad O’Connor . The Eurythmics vocalist sat piano-side, a tear-like streak of glitter applied below her left eye, delivering the Irish legend’s best-loved song with every ounce of gravitas the moment demanded — and then some.

"Nothing compares/ Nothing compares to you," she sang with her eyes gazing skyward, before clenching them tight, her lips quivering. And as the song rounded to a finish, Lenox raised a fist, and spoke a simple, direct sentence that the outspoken activist O'Connor surely would have appreciated: "Artists for ceasefire, peace in the world."

Joni Mitchell Proves It's Never Too Late For Firsts

When word got out that Joni Mitchell would be making her first performance at the GRAMMYs, the global anticipation for the ceremony seemed to hit a boiling point. Since recovering from a brain aneurysm in 2015, Mitchell has been stepping into the spotlight more in recent years, but the thought of her onstage at the 66th GRAMMY Awards still felt miraculous.

But then there was Brandi Carlile , extolling Mitchell’s many virtues before introducing one of the greatest singer-songwriters of all time. "Joni just turned 80 my friends, but we all know she’s timeless," Carlile smiled, noting as well that "the matriarch of imagination" had already won a GRAMMY that same evening for Best Folk Album. 

And then the lights came up on Joni, seated in a gold-framed armchair, clutching a cane with a silver cat’s head on its hilt, singing the first lines of the all-time classic "Both Sides Now." Backed by a band of GRAMMY-winning heroes in their own right (Carlile, along with SistaStrings, Blake Mills, Lucius, Allison Russell , and Jacob Collier ), it seems impossible that any eye in the room could have remained dry, let alone focused anywhere except right on Mitchell, with her beating heart and sky-scraping lyricism. Even Carlile, seated at her left, couldn’t stop looking up from her guitar to smile in awe.

"Well something's lost, but something's gained/ In living every day," she sang with a soft hint of a smile, before the well of strings, clarinet, guitars, and piano brought the final chorus in. 

Miley Finally Gets Her Flowers 

With what appeared to be four outfit changes between the red carpet and the stage and a sky-high, Dolly Parton -inspired brown bouffant, pop superstar Miley Cyrus delivered her fair share of memorable moments throughout the evening. Cyrus arrived at the 66th GRAMMY Awards without any GRAMMYs to her name, despite two previous nominations, a slew of hit albums, and 11 Top 10 singles dating back 17 years — which made her two wins even more noteworthy.

The GRAMMY drought ended thanks to smash single “Flowers,"which won Best Pop Solo Performance and Record Of The Year, solidifying Cyrus’ place both in GRAMMY history and as one of the year’s most celebrated pop stars. 

The former teen star took the stage at the 66th GRAMMY Awards as well, delivering “Flowers” to a star-studded — a daunting task for anyone, even a seasoned star. But it should have come as no surprise that Cyrus would be comfortable in that spotlight, as evidenced by her joking question for the entire room (and, it seemed, viewers at home, too): "Why are you acting like you don't know this song?" 

Despite her glowing near-speechlessness at finally earning a GRAMMY, the comfortable quips didn’t stop there. "I don't think I forgot anyone, but I might've forgotten underwear... bye!" she exclaimed before zipping offstage with her brand new GRAMMY hardware.

Celine & Mariah: Presenters Make History, Too

Even when just presenting awards, powerful women were at the forefront at the 66th GRAMMY Awards. The evening’s first presenter was Mariah Carey , onstage just three days after receiving the Impact Award from the Recording Academy’s Black Music Collective. The five-time GRAMMY-winner received the honor for her art’s influence and her inspirational legacy of service — and considering the ovation in the room, that impact was felt by her peers as well as the fans watching along at home.

Carey was presenting for Best Pop Solo Performance, and used her inimitable falsetto to deliver the ecstatic announcement: "And yes, this year all five nominees are women!" The sight of Carey handing Miley Cyrus her first GRAMMY (in honor of disco-tinged bop "Flowers") was, as Miley aptly put it, "too iconic."

While that opening set the stage for women dominating the show, the other bookend to the evening’s awards proved perhaps even more tear-jerking. At the end of 2023, the update came that Celine Dion’s battle with the rare neurological disorder "stiff person syndrome" had left the legendary vocalist without full control of her muscles, sometimes causing trouble walking or even using her vocal cords. As such, the sight of her walking down the golden tunnel and up to the microphone to announce the nominees for Album Of The Year felt like a special honor in and of itself.

"When I say that I’m happy to be here, I really mean it from my heart," she said. "Those who have been blessed enough to be here at the GRAMMY Awards must never take for granted the tremendous love and joy that music brings to our lives and to people all around the world."

Dion offering those lines — that positivity and beauty in the face of unprecedented difficulty — before presenting the award that would make history for Taylor Swift felt so fitting, emblematic of the powerful women who made the evening what it was.

Check Out The Full Winners & Nominees List For The 2024 GRAMMYs

• 1 Anderson .Paak, Chance The Rapper, Miguel & More To Honor Mac Miller With Tribute Concert
• 2 On 'Heavy,' SiR Wants People To See The Weight Of His Humanity
• 3 GRAMMY Rewind: Watch Doja Cat & SZA Tearfully Accept Their First GRAMMYs For "Kiss Me More"
• 4 10 Acceptance Speeches That Made Us Laugh, Cry, & Smile At The 2024 GRAMMYs
• 5 9 Ways Women Dominated The 2024 GRAMMYs

Mac Miller’s final interview, like the icon Jimi Hendrix’s, reveals the painful normalcy of uncertainty

The terrible art of figuring life out and the search for peace — whether one is famous, or not — has not changed

Up Next From Culture

“Everything has so much weight, but it’s all just chapters. It’s all just pieces of the story. There’s gonna be a next part. It’s not a big deal. It’s not. That’s the thing. Trust. The more I trust in who I am as a human being, the more I’m like, ‘Okay, this will all kind of figure itself out.’ ”

— Mac Miller

Sept. 18 marks 48 years since Jimi Hendrix died at 27, enshrining himself — next to Robert Johnson, Jean-Michel Basquiat , Kurt Cobain and Amy Winehouse — in the ghoulish 27 Club . While the cause of Hendrix’s 1970 death was officially ruled asphyxia due to barbiturate abuse, the paradigm-destroying guitarist’s final day has been a topic of debate for nearly a half-century.

Seattle’s James Marshall Hendrix, along with fellow 27 Club members such as Janis Joplin and Jim Morrison, helped bring to life the “sex, drugs, and rock ‘n’ roll” ethos of the 1960s. History may never know how many Vesparax sleeping tablets Hendrix actually took, but one is prescribed to knock a man out for eight hours, and Hendrix is said to have taken as many as nine the evening he died.

Hendrix’s music — 1967’s genius Are You Experienced and Axis: Bold As Love , and 1968’s genre-expanding Electric Ladyland — became part of the soundtrack of a young, rebellious generation bracketed by war, separated by racial strife and heartbroken by a decade of high-profile deaths and assassinations. His fans escaped into his music, finding pieces of their souls in his guitar solos.

Maybe it’s just timing? They are, of course, very different in terms of just about everything but sadness. Yet strands of a connection can be been found in the last interviews of Hendrix and of Pittsburgh rapper and producer Mac Miller. There has been an overwhelming outpouring of grief since the death of Miller , who was found dead on Sept. 7 in Studio City, California. While the cause of death is officially undetermined, a source told People that Miller went into cardiac arrest after “ appearing to suffer ” a drug overdose. It’s a death that has struck the hip-hop world harder than many might have expected.

Miller was 26. And Malcolm “Mac Miller” McCormick and Hendrix share a kinship in that their final interviews — Hendrix’s conducted a week before his death with NME , and Miller’s published a day before his death via Vulture.com — are breathtakingly normal.

A condensed and animated version of Hendrix’s final interview.

The more prophetic the death, the grander its legacy. We cherish Martin Luther King Jr.’s “Mountaintop” speech not only because of the power he spoke with but also because he envisioned the bullet that killed him on the balcony of the Lorraine Motel so soon after . We cherish Malcolm X’s “1965” chapter in his autobiography because he knew he was a man writing with death’s breath on his neck. We linger over Whitney Houston’s death because it is an ending we feared was inevitable.

We still grieve for Winehouse, whom the United Nations all but called an international menace to society for her drug and alcohol use. Seared in our brains are the two empty vodka bottles near the bed in which she was found. We languish over Marvin Gaye’s final months — a man spiritually at war with the world around and the soul within him before his own father ended Gaye’s life. We pine over Tupac Shakur’s last photo (and last words ) on the Las Vegas Strip because the look in his eyes reveals the reality he always knew was “ around the corner ” — and seemingly ran toward. We agonize over The Notorious B.I.G. dubbing his only studio albums Ready to Die and Life After Death.

Full audio of Jimi Hendrix’s last interview given a week before his death with NME’s Keith Allston on Sept. 11, 1970, in England

Yet in the final two interviews of each of Hendrix’s and Miller’s lives, it doesn’t appear they were breathing like they could see death in the corner of their eye. Perhaps that is what will always haunt us. Neither gave an urgent manifesto.

Hendrix was in the process of reinventing himself musically — a process that, according to longtime Hendrix engineer Eddie Kramer, “ the public didn’t understand .” Nearly two years had passed since Ladyland and a year since Hendrix redirected the course of music history with his 1969 Woodstock performance of the national anthem that channeled the rage, despair, hope and pride of a generation that knew a god with a guitar when they saw one. Over the course of the 30-minute interview (above, on Soundcloud), Hendrix floated through a multitude of topics ranging from his Isle of Wight festival performance to putting together a new band.

He was quasi-skeptical of his own talents, unsure how people would take to the fruits of his marathon recording sessions. Self-doubt is artistry’s calling card. “Everybody goes through those stages,” Hendrix said of the quieter approach he was taking with his image. He cut his hair. His numerous rings began to slowly disappear. Hendrix’s life had changed. He realized that he wasn’t invincible. His acquittal of a career-threatening drug charge in Toronto in 1969 was a lesson. “I felt like I was being too loud or something, because my nature just changed.”

The weight of his reality also gave way to a revolving door of vices. For Hendrix, the blues weren’t merely a genre . The blues were his life. “My hang-up is getting hung up with things that happened in the past.”

As Hendrix contemplates a life of lavishness, he’s asked if he’s made enough money in his career to live comfortably. Hendrix laughs. The rock star lifestyle wasn’t going to finance itself. “I want to get up in the morning and just roll over in my bed into an indoor swimming pool and then swim to the breakfast table, come up for air and get maybe a drink of orange juice or something like that,” he said . “Then just flop over from the chair into the swimming pool, swim into the bathroom and go on and shave and whatever.”

It was always easy to root for the perfectionist in Miller. And like Hendrix’s final interview, Miller’s paints a profile of an artist in transition. Headlines about his breakup with Ariana Grande (reportedly due in part to his struggles with addiction) and a May car crash that resulted in a DUI were part of the tabloid-related energy surrounding Miller in his final months. Yet, there was a sense of peace he was finding in himself as he talked to Vulture ’s Craig Jenkins .

“I think I’m in a different place than I thought I would be, but I think I’m in a place that Malcolm as a human being wanted,” Miller noted. “When you first get caught up in everything, that’s what you want. You want more. More of this. You want to be at these places and this and that. I think I’m in a place now which is just natural to me.”

Anxiety haunted him, as it does so many. But, in his last deep talk with a journalist, the feeling was that Miller was evolving — if nothing else, learning to cope with the ebbs and flows that come with being north of the dirt. “Maybe I’m wrong. Maybe that’s just a game that I haven’t got into playing. But it just seems exhausting to always be battling something,” Miller said . “To always be battling for what you think your image is supposed to be. You’re never going to be able to get anything across. No one’s ever gonna really know me … and that’s OK.”

Miller’s Q&A with Jenkins is more therapy session than interview. More release than retreat. The conversation was something Miller, as demonstrated by his willingness to be open, appreciated. His last activity on Twitter, hours before his death, was sharing Jenkins’ story. The talk may have been a way out of his own head, just as he’d yearned for on this year’s psychotherapeutic and tender ode “ Come Back to Earth .”

Uncertainty and anxiety over the future is the DNA linking Hendrix and Miller and their final interviews, separated by nearly 50 years. Both were young men in the back half of their 20s. As Jenkins noted, labeling Miller a “work in progress” is marginally accurate but fails to paint the entire picture. The same goes for Hendrix.

The demons and the drug usage that bond these two (and so many others, famous or not) only tell half their stories. Miller, like Hendrix and those of his generation, are no different, musical talent aside, from anyone attempting to solve the Rubik’s Cube of happiness.

Peace is life’s fingerprint — different for each person. It’s what we’re all born searching for. Miller’s music, Hendrix’s music and their last interviews are testaments to the hunt for that personal utopia. Perhaps they found portions.

“The one thing I know for sure that I can do no one else can is do whatever this is. Whoever I am. It’s just trying to get there as much as possible,” Miller said in a quote that, over time, will come to represent the complexity of his life to generations still decades from birth. “My goal is trying to find some type of comfort. I think the last wish I made was for peace of mind, probably.”

Justin Tinsley is a senior culture writer for Andscape. He firmly believes “Cash Money Records takin’ ova for da ’99 and da 2000” is the single most impactful statement of his generation.

Mac Miller Tour History

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Mac Miller's Final Tweets: Rapper Addressed His Tour and Anxiety

In the days leading up to his death from an apparent overdose, rapper Mac Miller expressed his [...]

By Allison Schonter - September 7, 2018 05:10 pm EDT

In the days leading up to his death from an apparent overdose , rapper Mac Miller expressed his excitement for his upcoming tour and opened up about anxiety.

Miller passed away at the age of 26 on Friday, Sept. 7, according to a report from TMZ , but in the days leading up to his death, the rapper, who previously dated Ariana Grande, was active on social media. Among tweets regarding his upcoming Swimming tour, he also opened up about more personal experiences.

"I just wanna go on tour," Miller tweeted at 9:29 p.m. on Thursday, Sept. 6, just 19 hours before news of his death first broke.

I just wanna go on tour — Mac (@MacMiller) September 7, 2018

In a second tweet posted not long after, the 26-year-old again discussed his tour, writing, "go get tickets," and included the names of his opening acts, Thundercat and J.I.D. He also stated, "I'm bringing a band," and promised fans that despite the dozens of locations, the show would be "special every night."

Go get tickets for tour. Thundercat J.I.D. I’m bringing a band. The show is going to be special every night. I wish it started tomorrow. It starts October 27th. //t.co/RGYZC5DTza — Mac (@MacMiller) September 7, 2018

In his most recent Twitter activity, dated Thursday, Sept. 6, Miller retweeted a Vulture article in which he discussed his sudden rise to fame and his anxiety.

I hung out with @MacMiller last month and talked about fame and anxiety and the making of 'Swimming.' //t.co/MRx8J0zkh8 — Craig Bro Dude (@CraigSJ) September 6, 2018

"I used to rap super openly about really dark s–," Miller said in the interview of his music, adding, "because that's what I was experiencing at the time. That's fine, that's good, that's life. It should be all the emotions."

As for those days that led to the darker elements of his music, Miller said that he would not necessarily trade them out for an entirely good life full of only good days.

"I really wouldn't want just happiness," Miller said. "And I don't want just sadness either. I don't want to be depressed. I want to be able to have good days and bad days…I can't imagine not waking up sometimes and being like, 'I don't feel like doing s–.' And then having days where you wake up and you feel on top of the world."

Miller was set to kick off his The Swimming Tour on Saturday, Oct. 27 at The Masonic in San Francisco, California. The tour was set to take him across the country, with stops in Atlanta, Orlando, Detroit, Chicago, and more, before eventually coming to a close on Dec. 9 at PNE Forum in Vancouver, British Columbia.

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Mac Miller Was Unfinished

From frat-rap mixtapes to singing his heart out on a Tiny Desk Concert, Mac evolved in unexpected ways. After his passing, we mourn the musician and lament what other artistic turns his career might have taken.

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If you’re like me, you were or are currently being pulled kicking and screaming into adulthood. There’s plenty of advice for navigating hardship (your parents likely supplied plenty of adages), but it’s often short shrift for navigating the regularness of life. All of the questions feel stupid: Can you corner your thoughts long enough to complete the task? Is there any one correct way to be? How much should you know about the things that you don’t? Are you behind? It’s dismaying, chasing something that seems within arm’s reach for everyone else yet lies just on the periphery of your own understanding. With no satisfying answers available, we make it all up as we stumble along. Mac Miller was emblematic of that ethos. Mac Miller asked all of those same questions.

His music, much like his career and his life, was an unlikely reassurance that you could always learn to be better. However long you spent wandering around in the dark, stepping on rakes, you might in time—if you do the work —find the light switch. Few artists wandered better than he did.

Not at first, which is the point: He rose to prominence in the neon-colored age of frat rap, where a bunch of dudebros in lax pinnies, snapbacks, and aviators rapped awkwardly about doing keg stands and making the night legendary , 7 a.m. freshman seminars be damned. Born Malcolm McCormick, Miller’s first tape was put out under the name Easy Mac, like the boxed macaroni. The first song on Mackin’ Ain’t Easy was called “Barz for Dayz,” on which he gleefully rapped “We playing games in this jungle, Jumanji / With bomb tree, hidden under all my dirty laundry.” He was extremely 15 years old at the time but also extremely decent for 15.

He was 18 when people began to decide that he was nice —the indie rapper coasted into a surprisingly large amount of mainstream success on the back of two mixtapes: 2010’s seminal K.I.D.S. , a lot of which was standard suburban teenager fare, and 2011’s Best Day Ever , which received a commercial bump from a feud with Donald Trump. Miller was still just a goofy, grinning white kid rapping with proficiency about things parents just don’t understand, appealing mostly to other kids who looked like him. Yet Miller was always a bona fide music nerd. It sounds trite to say so, but his genuine love for the art form is ultimately what sustained him and later spurred his reinventions. (You also can’t discount his self-awareness; he was flip about his advantages at first but later developed a well-reasoned perspective about what a white rapper’s place in the game is or should be.)

For instance, he probably won’t be remembered for 2011’s Blue Slide Park. Miller showed minimal-to-nonexistent growth on his first album, but it nonetheless debuted at no. 1 and eventually, after getting savaged by critics, went gold. It wasn’t until 2013, after some very public soul-searching and a promising, introspective mixtape—2012’s Macadelic —that he won everyone over. He fully blossomed from a lovable stoner dork into something weirder on his sophomore album, the murky, genre-agnostic Watching Movies With the Sound Off . He’d started hanging out with Schoolboy Q. He walked barefoot through Brooklyn freestyling dexterously about sitting Seder with Bill Clinton. He made songs with Earl Sweatshirt. These swerves were all, critically speaking, correctives. Miller was finally an artist.

He won me over personally with “Objects in the Mirror.” It remains my favorite Mac Miller song, and if you have the time, you should watch the live version from the Space Migration Sessions.

Understand that prior to seeing this video, I had no knowledge of Larry Lovestein , the alter ego under which he released a 2012 jazz-inflected EP of love ballads. Around that time he was also working with Pharrell Williams on their ill-fated Pink Slime project, and during those sessions Pharrell encouraged Miller to sing. And here he was, in a King Krule tee, backed by the Internet, really singing. Others may mark it elsewhere, but to my mind, this is the inflection point for an artist—for a person—preoccupied with becoming comfortable within himself.

I prefer this to the recorded versions you can find on Watching Movies or 2013’s Live From Space because of its imperfections. His voice here stretches anxiously for notes just above his range. It seems like the drummer’s time is just a little quicker than he would like, not allowing Miller to linger on any one of his thoughts, forcing him to go for it. His gruffness is smoothed out by bits of reverb at the end of each line, but he’s running out of breath, which lends gravity to a song that at times can be a little cheesy. That’s the gamble with naked honesty:

Mend a broken heart, girl, if you can I don’t expect you to be capable You got the world right in your hands And that responsibility is unescapable I promise that I’ll be a different man Please give me the chance to go and live again I’m having some trouble, can you give a hand?

Piecing together an image of Mac after his passing makes this song and this performance feel epigrammatic. “I promise that I’ll be a different man” has stung the most over a few dozen listens these past few days. This past May brought new and profound lows for Miller, whose struggles with addiction were an open book. He had a public split with his girlfriend of two years, ran his car into a tree, fled the scene, and all of his social accounts went dark. For anyone else that could mean renewed focus or album mode—“Your mind works through the worst with the guy who made Faces , the 2014 mixtape full of ominous lyrics about hard drugs and musings on premature death,” Craig Jenkins pointed out in a Vulture profile that ran the day before Miller’s death of an apparent overdose.

What makes this tragedy doubly galling is that on the outside, nothing seemed to suggest that he was living toward that. Watch his early-August NPR Tiny Desk Concert. What do you see? A man wizened by mishaps, at something close to peace, razzing Thundercat for putting just a little too much effort into using the shaker. The lyrics were chilling—“I can feel my fingers slippin’ / In a motherfuckin’ instant I’ll be gone,” he sighs on “Small Worlds”—but Mac oozed warmth and approachability, filling in the play gaps with banter about how he didn’t know what to say.

All of which is to say that he seemed happy; the kind of happy that lies on the other side of weary. Maybe he was even hopeful. He had cause to be. He’d just released his most accomplished album and was gearing up for a fall tour with a band that floored John Mayer with all of its possibilities. “You gotta know that if you weren’t familiar with Mac Miller, you were about to be, whether you would have seen him at a festival or a friend was going to catch a show and tell everyone they knew about it (like I did),” Mayer wrote in a emotional note on Instagram. Elton John, who dedicated a recent performance of “Don’t Let the Sun Go Down on Me” to Miller, lamented both lost talent and potential.

Mostly though, if you look around on Twitter and Instagram, you’ll find fellow musicians, collaborators, and bloggers mourning the person about whom almost no one has anything bad to say. That’s telling, and worlds away from the heady days of Blue Slide Park. You don’t necessarily know more at 19 than you did at 18, but at 30, you could be a completely different person. Now all we can do is imagine who Mac Miller might have been.

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By Sheldon Pearce

January 17, 2020

Mac Miller ’s death from an accidental drug overdose sent ripples across the rap community he helped cultivate . He was a kind-hearted collaborator and invested heavily in others’ growth, but his musical arc was left unfinished. In August of 2018, he put out Swimming , an album that was like a quantum leap in self-discovery. Then, a month later, at 26, he was gone, unable to realize that potential. Now there’s Circles , a posthumously released Swimming companion piece that gives his years of work a bit of closure. It’s the culmination of a career spent improving, a fitting epilogue to an aspirational life.

Miller had worked closely on early versions of these songs with composer-producer Jon Brion , who was committed to finishing the album after Miller’s death. It’s unclear how deep Miller was into the process at the time of his passing, but this sounds like a completed work, or as complete as it can be. “This is a complicated process that has no right answer. No clear path,” his family wrote in a letter on his Instagram. “We simply know that it was important to Malcolm for the world to hear it.”

If Swimming wasn’t Miller’s best album, it was certainly the one where he came into his own as an artist. There are moments on 2015’s GO:OD AM where his rapping is sharpest, 2014’s Faces accommodated his most ambitious ideas, and 2016’s The Divine Feminine is his most diverse and complete project, a testament to the community of musicians he’d established around him. But Swimming hinted at an artist who’d finally cleared his mind and found his footing. Circles provides some resolution and helps finish Miller’s final thoughts.

Miller seemed to envision Circles as the completion of a loop. “My god, it go on and on/Just like a circle, I go back to where I’m from,” he rapped on Swimming closer “So It Goes.” That record was about being fine on the surface while struggling with anxiety; this one is about knowing there’s something to be done about it. Both records are about working through depression, how the bad days are long and the good days feel fleeting, but the tone is more optimistic here. The imagery of a cluttered mind is a near-constant in Miller’s final songs. On the plucked single “Good News,” he likens the recovery process to spring cleaning, which feels fitting for someone looking to hit the refresh button. “Sometimes I get lonely/Not when I’m alone/But it’s more when I’m standin’ in crowds that I’m feelin’ the most on my own,” he raps on “Surf,” a poignant realization for someone who spent his last years surrounded by throngs of fans. But it comes with an epiphany, a sort of thesis for the album: “And I know that somebody knows me/I know somewhere, there’s home/I’m startin’ to see that all I have to do is get up and go.”

Circles never really opens up into a full-fledged rap album, content to push back and forth between lo-fi beat music and singer-songwriter indie folk, working almost entirely with live arrangements. After doing his most-ever singing on Swimming , he crosses a threshold into doing almost no rapping on Circles . That was the entire idea: two albums bringing balance to each other. The few songs that do have raps in them display his love of the form and improvement as a writer. On “Hand Me Downs,” he raps about moving carelessly and stumbling through the same patterns. “Hands,” the only full rap song, works through negativity while displaying the subtly knotty lyricism he fell in love with as a teenager.

Miller was always trying to balance being the guy who started Facebook’s first Big L fan page with his love for the nakedness of 1970’s John Lennon/Plastic Ono Band . He didn’t live long enough to get to really reconcile those sides of himself, but as halves of a complete work, Swimming and Circles come the closest. Together, they establish the rapper-producer as comfortable in his skin, no longer out to prove to naysayers he could bar out. These are mellow, relaxed songs in search of that exact state of being. “‘Fore I start to think about the future/First can I please get through a day/Without any complications,” he sings on “Complicated.” It’s more Plastic Ono Band than Lifestylez ov da Poor & Dangerous —lots of guitars, some keys, light bass, the occasional synth line—but not beholden to any one sound.

The chill-out aesthetic won’t come as a surprise to those familiar with Mac Miller’s Space Migration Tour , which transformed the songs in his catalog with warm Internet -laced grooves from their days futzing with electronica and experimental jazz. He was a huge rap nerd but he also loved the prospect of playing with a live band. These songs feel like an attempt to smooth down his interests into something comprehensive, and Brion seems like the perfect person to usher them to completion. He serves as a co-producer on most songs, an additional producer on all the others, and his work makes the songs shapelier without compromising Miller’s vision for them.

When a young rapper dies too soon, fans start listening to their music much more closely, combing over their lyrics to find the writing on the wall. With Miller, you don’t have to dive too deeply. “God Speed” is rife with thoughts about going down a destructive path and on “Brand Name,” he wrote a disclaimer that proved tragically prescient : “To everyone who sell me drugs/Don’t mix it with that bullshit, I’m hopin’ not to join the 27 Club.” But Circles dispels any sense of fatalism in his music. He was still idealistic; in these songs, he is searching for a way to break the cycle, a way forward. It’s only appropriate that Mac Miller’s final musical act be one of self-reformation.

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Mac Miller Concert Setlists & Tour Dates

Mac miller at late show with stephen colbert, new york, ny, usa.

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Mac Miller at The Hotel Cafe, Los Angeles, CA, USA

• 100 Grandkids
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Mac Miller at Tiny Desk Concerts, Washington, DC, USA

Mac miller at lollapalooza brazil 2018.

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Ab‐Soul The Alchemist Anderson .Paak Rayland Baxter Big Something Bonnaroo Superjam Action Bronson Connor Brooks Earl Sweatshirt Earl Sweatshirt & The Alchemist EAZYBAKED Flying Lotus Free Nationals Ariana Grande Trevor Hall JID Mike Jones The Marcus King Band Kitchen Dwellers Leftover Salmon Lil Skies Liquid Stranger Manic Manic. Vinny Mauro Pomo Rabbit In Red Rooftop J Ship Wrek Slightly Stoopid Tape B The Groovy Bastards The Open Doors Thundercat Tyler, the Creator Various Artists The Vices Willie Peyote Chevy Woods

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2Pac Chris Brown Cam’ron ClockworkDJ Delusional Thomas DMX Ariana Grande House of Pain DJ Khaled Jerry Lordan Lynyrd Skynyrd Biz Markie Bob Marley & The Wailers The Notorious B.I.G. Oasis Prince Shaggy Sublime Thundercat Casey Veggies Weezer

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