The bittersweet song Mac Miller wrote about God welcoming him into heaven
Mac Miller, the visionary you are. It’s difficult to speak about The Kid From Pittsburgh without spilling into hyperbole; he was a trend forecaster rather than follower, deeply respected by his genre peers while being utterly peerless in vision, a bona fide artist over a clout chaser.
His death in 2018, aged just 26, was perhaps one of music’s saddest losses, in an already crowded landscape of great artists dying young. Perhaps that’s why whatever Mac has to say about death packs a particularly sensitive punch today, all these years on.
Speaking to NPR in 2015 upon the launch of his then-recent album, GO:OD AM, the interviewers Ali Shaheed Muhammed and Frannie Kelley broke down with Mac many of the songs on his album. But it’s the rapper’s musings on the final track – ‘The Festival’ – that is particularly poignant.
“’The Festival’ — for some reason, I’m obsessed with albums ending in death,” Mac said. “I don’t know why. And it’s not even necessarily a negative sad thing, but I guess to me an album is just a life — it’s like a mini-lifetime.”
“So ‘The Festival’ is actually supposed to be, Yukimi from Little Dragon is supposed to be god welcoming me into heaven. I think maybe it’s like the, kind of what we were talking about earlier. How this generation is less inclined to do what is told to be the right thing or more just like what they feel, which — there’s pros and cons,” he explained.
“Sometimes people are correct — er, sorry. Correct and incorrect, I guess is — about a feeling, opinion,” he continued. “But people do what they feel. So sometimes, in my opinion, it brings positive things, and sometimes it brings negative things. But it’s just kind of like living in this chaos of everyone kind of really following their heart, which is pretty dope when people have good hearts, I guess.”
GO:OD AM marked a turning point in Mac’s career, showcasing the rapper’s move from his earlier frat boy party rap music of album Blue Slide Park and mixtapes K.I.D.S and Best Day Ever, to something more introspective and soulful.
Notable for its fusion of jazzy instrumentation, reflective lyricism, and soulful hooks, the album unpacked the rapper’s relationship with rapidly rising success alongside his personal self-growth. With guest appearances from the likes of Ab-Soul, Chief Keef, Lil B, Little Dragon and Miguel, the album debuted at number four on the Billboard 200, and received positive reviews from critics.
“I like performing these songs just because they’re still fresh for me. So I’ll take performing ‘Perfect Circle’ to people sitting there watching over performing ‘Donald Trump’ to a bunch of people jumping just because I’ve done that so many times,” Mac said in the same interview, when asked what it was like performing the album for the first time live.
“You either hit it from an energy standpoint where all you’re trying to do is create energy,” he also said. “You want to people to jump around. You want people to put their hands in the air. You want people to not think. You want to people to just like, lose their minds.” Ten years on from the release of this transitional album, which remains both a fan favourite and a zeitgeist staple, it’s fair to say Mac Miller got his wish.