As we’ve been reporting, Mac Miller was found dead at his San Fernando Valley home on Friday by authorities, the victim of an apparent overdose.
He was just 26 years old.
Related: Celebs React To Mac Miller’s Shocking Death
And while his death came as a shock to many within the music industry, it’s doubly shocking considering Vulture put out a full-length feature on the rapper just one day before, telling a tale of redemption and resurrection… until tragedy struck.
The feature is set in NYC, following Mac Miller around the day after he performed for Stephen Colbert‘s late-night show, and it opens with Mac dissecting his performance and admitting he can often be his own toughest critic (below):
“I have a tendency to kinda brood about stuff and cook in it. I’ll wake up and just sit here and think about it for hours.”
Later, the author of the piece — Craig Jenkins — analyzes the slow burn that had to this point been Mac Miller’s career (below):
“He rejects the notion that he’s all that famous, but the truth is that he earned respect among hip-hop fans through years of sweat and hard work. Most rap careers open big and crumble over time, but this one is a long game.”
So sad…
But this next paragraph from Jenkins may be the most heartbreaking, at least as it pertains to today’s news (below):
“The chief drawback of blowing up young is the lack of room for error. Because Miller’s music is frank about his struggles, and because those struggles periodically involve drug use, he lives in the constant shadow of questions about his well-being. There are people who think he’s a round-the-clock reckless, depressive party animal. Really, he spends his days relatively upbeat and preoccupied with music, and also with working out and balancing his diet. He’s not above mistakes and indulgences: Last May, Miller caught a DUI after crashing his Mercedes-Benz G-Class in Southern California and summarily went silent on social media. Your mind works through the worst with the guy who made Faces, the 2014 mixtape full of ominous lyrics about hard drugs and musings on premature death. ‘I used to rap super openly about really dark shit,’ he says of that time in his life and artistry and the mark it has left on the way audiences connect the facts of his life with the themes of his music, ‘because that’s what I was experiencing at the time. That’s fine, that’s good, that’s life. It should be all the emotions.’ As a result, he knows what everyone thinks about him, and now he has to teach himself not to care.”
Wow.
And finally, Jenkins notes that while most of 2018 was difficult for Miller — considering the end of his relationship, as well as a DUI charge after a car accident — things were looking up for the Pittsburgh native by the time August rolled around (below):
“May might’ve looked like a low, but Mac Miller’s August was a peak. Swimming’s hushed, unfussy musicality paid off as the album landed at a strong No. 3 on the Billboard 200 in a week stacked with quality rap releases. (It might’ve been No. 2 if not for the surprise drop of Travis Scott’s Astroworld, which surged past Swimming and Drake’s Scorpion to No. 1.) Mac is happy with the outcome: ‘I’m less concerned with being king of the hill than being able to put shit out.’ His teenage dream of being top dog has settled into a steady drive to stick around the rap business as long as it’ll have him. The patient evolution of his art will keep him in the conversation as long as he’s careful. ‘Now I’m in the clouds, come down when I run out of jet fuel,” he raps on Swimming’s ‘Jet Fuel,’ ‘but I never run out of jet fuel.'”
Truly heartbreaking, and haunting.
R.I.P., Mac Miller…
Read the full Vulture interview HERE.
[Image via WENN.]
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