Happy Birthday, Mac! A playlist to celebrate the late rapper’s 27th birthday
On January 19, 1992, Mac Miller, was brought into the world.
The late rapper passed away in his home in September of 2018, and while he is no longer physically with us, the mark that Miller left on the on the hip-hop genre and music industry at large is indelible. Dancing Astronaut presents a 27 track playlist in commemoration of what would have been Mac Miller’s 27th birthday. The playlist scales the artist’s catalog to feature cuts from Mac’s well-received debut album, Blue Slide Park–the production that gave Mac traction in the market–Macadelic, Watching Movies with the Sound Off, Live From Space, The Divine Feminine, Best Day Ever, GO:OD AM, and Swimming, the fifth and final offering to emerge from Mac Miller’s studio.
In its teeming entirety, Mac Miller’s catalog can be considered a bildungsroman story, albeit one not of a literary, but a musical kind. The invincible and colorful sense of lyrical personality that Mac Miller presented on Blue Slide Park in 2011 matured with each of Miller’s ensuing long-form showings. Contemplative and cerebral in its exploration of the darker and more poignant depths of the human psyche and weight of solitude, the Mac Miller of 2018’s Swimming was a perceptibly different Mac Miller from that of 2011’s Best Day Ever, the fifth mixtape to bear the “Mac Miller” stamp. Ever able to reinvent his flow, to present his hip-hop genius in a different hue, Mac Miller harnessed creative versatility.
Mac Miller all the while straddled the lyrical line of the paradoxical confidence of a youth trying to find his way in the world, and the grown artist who had found his path, and continued to walk along it, music his preferred vehicle through which to relate his experiences, sonic anecdotes. Whether a feel good cut situated in the very heart of bliss like “Party on Fifth Ave,” or a comparatively more serious song of personal reflection like “Come Back to Earth,” the inclusions of Mac’s catalogue emanate a youthful spirit that, immortalized in Mac’s catalog, is evergreen.
Without further ado, happy birthday, Mac Miller.
Photo Credit: G L Askew II
Categories: Features