The first hip-hop album Mac Miller ever listened to: “Then I could rap”
Mac Miller was into hip-hop for most of his life, but there was once a time when he had never listened to a rap album. One LP changed the trajectory of his life, belonging to a couple of eccentric rappers out of Atlanta.
The Pittsburgh native initially wanted to be a singer after playing the piano, guitar, drums and bass during his youth, but his attention turned to rapping at 14. From there, he came up with the name Easy Mac.
“Once I hit 15, I got real serious about it, and it changed my life completely,” he told the Pittsburgh Post-Gazette. “I used to be into sports, play all the sports, go to all the high school parties. But once I found out hip-hop is almost like a job, that’s all I did.”
The body of work that changed everything for Mac was Outkast’s 1998 album Aquemini. The project, home to singles such as ‘Rosa Parks’ and ‘Da Art of Storytellin’ (Pt. 1)’, was his first taste of the hip-hop art form. He loved it so much that he learned every song lyric to rap along to the entire album.
“The first rap album I ever listened to was Aquemeni,” he recalled to Pitchfork. “Which is a fucking awesome start. I got Aquemeni, went to my grandma’s room, she had a CD player. I took the CD player out, I took out the lyrics sheet, and I locked myself in my room and rapped along to the whole CD. Then I was in. Then I could rap, apparently. I don’t know.”
On another occasion, Mac called the album his “guiding light” and the body of work that set the bar for him. “Being that young, and having an idea of what I thought music should be, then hearing Aquemini completely shifted things,” he said in Q magazine. “It’s a whole, complete album, not just a collection of songs. ‘Hold On, Be Strong’ is such an incredible opening track. It makes me feel like I’m in water, which is my favourite feeling.”
Mac once revealed that working with Outkast’s André 3000 was his dream after growing up on his words. “That’s one of my favourite rappers ever,” he said. “I don’t know, if I could work with him, it would be crazy.”
He continued, “I don’t really wanna put too much into who I work with because if people don’t wanna work with me or believe in what I’m doing then it’s cool. I mean, I already have some tracks in with some legends in the game so I’ve already done things that I never believed I would do before.”
In 2011, he revealed his love for another Outkast album, 2003’s Speakerboxxx/The Love Below, which was in his rotation at the time. “[I] always have an Outkast album in there,” he said on Montreality. “Right now I got Speakerboxxx/The Love Below because I’ve been listening to Aquemini so much that you’ve gotta have both.”
Mac sampled OutKast’s ‘Two Dope Boyz (In a Cadillac)’ on ‘Class President’, which appeared on his 2009 mixtape The High Life.