Credit: Alamy

The late Pennsylvania emcee Mac Miller was a one-of-a-kind artist and showed ingenuity when it came to carefully crafting bodies of work. During the 2010s, he acquired a cult following in his hometown of Pittsburgh and, as a white rapper, began turning heads with his incredible material.

With humble beginnings, the late musician rose to fame at a similar time to the likes of Tyler The Creator, A$AP Rocky and Yung Lean during the early 2010s. While this era saw an influx of young black and Latino creatives rise out of Harlem in New York, a strange surge in talent came out of Pennsylvania’s Pittsburgh.

This saw artists such as Mac Miller, Wiz Khalifa and Chevy Woods coming into the spotlight with quality rap. However, Mac Miller would outlast Khalifa in the long run as a rapper producing music with longevity.

Miller, from the outside, had a lot going for him and was even happily dating pop star Ariana Grande for a period. Nonetheless, behind closed doors, the young artist struggled with substance abuse and chronic depression. The two, in conjunction, would ultimately lead to his death in 2018.

However, as a young man, Miller wasn’t initially a rap fan but slowly but surely got ushered into the culture with love and good music. Following the release of his 2013 album Watching Movies with the Sound Off, Miller sat down with Complex magazine to discuss some of the albums that made him love hip-hop.

While speaking about some of his early favourites, Miller spoke about the 2004 project Mm…Food by MF Doom. Opening up about his love for it, Miller stated, “I just like love the texture of his voice against the beats, like, it’s very ‘Fuck you.’”

Miller continuedL “He kind of throws it down there, but it’s very purposeful. It sounds effortless, but everything is purposeful. I’ve never talked to him about it, or talk to him in general, so I wouldn’t know, but records like ‘Vomitspit’ are the fucking shit. It’s great music for like anything in life. You can play it anytime, it’s good.”

However, Miller admitted that there was one East Coast classic that inspired him as a youngster. Furthermore, he disclosed that it was the project that made him explore a career in hip-hop.

The album that defined Mac Miller was Lifestylez Ov da Poor & Dangerous, the 1995 Big L debut. Delving into how it influenced him, Miller declared, “That’s the album that made me start rapping. Everybody knows that about me. That’s who I used to try to be like. I used to be a fucking straight gangster street rapper from the projects of New York.”

He concluded by admitting that he used to mimic the rhymes of a Harlem gangster, recalling, “In one of my raps, my line was like, ‘On the East Side we ride on the weed high/Jacking cats packing fat stacks in their Levis/Rap stacks for cash that we divide/Fee-fi we ain’t going down where you reside, creeping/Running through your house while you sleeping.’ I had a line where I said, ‘Stay strapped with the gat to your kneecap.’ I was bad, gang-banging. Not to be fucked with. Hardcore motherfucker named Mac. That shit was crazy.”

You can listen to the album that made Mac Miller start rapping below.