Blue slide park album cover
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His fifth official album is an ambling 13-song journey towards self-acceptance, one that does not end in triumph. Where The Divine Feminine probed the spaces between people, Swimming focuses on Miller. Swimming seems informed by a similar sentiment. He had never sounded more at ease with his place in the world – but, as he rapped a couple of years earlier, “the good times can be a trap”. He sang as much as he rapped on The Divine Feminine (2016), an intoxicating exploration of the ways we are transformed by love. His rhymes got tighter and the beats trippier, often under his production alias, Larry Fisherman. His marked creative improvement since then may have demonstrated an ability to learn from criticism, or maybe he just grew up regardless, over the past five years, Miller’s music has become exponentially better, not to mention weirder. Miller’s narratives didn’t venture far beyond the realm of dorm parties, and his fairly pejorative “frat rap” designation spoke not only to the demographics of his fanbase, but also to a much broader shift in hip-hop’s audience. Clearly, popularity wasn’t a problem for the Pittsburgh native, but acclaim was a different story. Before he had turned 20, his first album, Blue Slide Park (2011), became the first independently distributed debut to top the Billboard charts since 1995. It is not hard to imagine why Miller was in dire need of a reality check.
BLUE SLIDE PARK ALBUM COVER MAC
It's just that without ever truly harnessing the kind Jekyll-and-Hyde potential made famous by - white rapper parallel alert - one Slim Shady, Blue Slide Park ends up a charm-bereft everyman hip hop record merely ticking the boxes required to shift units.‘I got all the time in the world’ … Mac Miller Up All Night jauntily handclaps its way through an excitable pop-tastic party stomp, overflowing with dumb fun and echoes of lightweight Californian good-time soundtrackers Smash Mouth.Īnd Miller does wrestle gamely with the two sides of his musical personality. It's not impossible to see why he has won hearts.
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Muddying the waters further, more than one rhyme disparately mines his bar mitzvah-replete upbringing, whether mourning holocaust victims or noting he "always do it big like a Jewish nose". Wider juxtapositions are similarly befuddling: Miller happily indulges in occasional spots of misogynist wordplay, then spits about conscious trailblazers De La Soul. The next moment, with scant warning, Smile Back winds up and delivers a hypnotic momentum owing more to snap music straight out of dirty south strip clubs, name-checking Texan underground kings UGK for good measure. The former packs in chunky beats and honest, semi-wistful verses that could position Miller alongside the true school hip hop movement. Yet Blue Slide Park is a record in semi-open conflict with itself, pitching twee cover artwork and dips into ballad-esque considerations against regular bluster-filled club hit intent.Įvidence? Try the six-minute span of Frick Park Market and Smile Back. Seven mixtapes deep, for what it's worth, he has racked up eight-figure numbers on YouTube as if they possess an expiry date. Labelmate and close pal of radio-humping rhymer Wiz Khalifa, Miller - or the distinctly un-rap Malcolm McCormick to his postman - has worked hard to get this far. Pittsburgh native Mac Miller might very well sum up the phenomenon with this debut album proper, finally earning a UK bow after confirming his ascent on its stateside release in November 2011. Hip hop has hit something of a self-aware apex in the 21st century's first decade, having learned which buttons to press to ensure success.