Mac Miller’s
Balloonerism
(2024) exceeds the intangible constraints set by time and space. Recorded in 2014, posthumously released a decade later,
Balloonerism
sounds calm and collected like a premeditated studio release but was actually recorded with a temporal urgency that does not align with the fact that it never officially appeared during the rapper’s lifetime.
According to
Dissect
(via Josh Berg, Mac Miller’s studio engineer), the album is truly a relic of the past; it was essentially orchestrated in the span of two weeks and has been left mostly unadulterated over the years. As with Miller’s other posthumous albums, like
Circles
(2020) and
Faces
(commercially released in 2021, but also recorded in 2014), the artist’s pronounced conceptual vision supersedes any executive desire to tamper with the work of the deceased. And this is not just out of respect for the deceased, but for the sake of leaving his clear-cut sonic framework uncomplicated. But
Balloonerism
is by no means a leftover rough draft, and although it touches on many of the same themes as Miller’s final few musical outputs, it serves as a retrospective preface for what was to come as the Pittsburgh musician continued to develop his sound.
Balloonerism
marks an inflection point for Miller in multiple ways. It was the literal mid-point of his active music career while also indicating a shift in content and stylistic experimentation. We see bits and pieces of the past and future alike on the album. This is before Miller began to fully grasp his subversive talent on an effort like
Circles
, so mixtures of blunt childish wonder in both lyrics and instrumentation appear. The latter is most apparent in his collaborations with Thundercat throughout the production of Balloonerism on songs like “Funny Papers” and “5 Dollar Pony Rides.”
But this is not a matter of Mac delegating the difficult duties of trying new tactics to a peer, as the artist himself is credited multiple times as a contributor to production or the sole producer himself… kind of. Miller tags himself as his alter-ego Larry Fisherman, the much more jazz-soul oriented counterpart to his rapper roots, further delineating this split between what once was and what is but also how the two can coexist. With Fisherman on the shimmering strings and Miller on vocals for “Manakins,” the artist questions his grip on reality and, ironically, his own identity with all the voices that seem to permeate around him with unsolicited advice.
But let us not forget that Miller is also the same dude who made coming-of-age anthems like “The Spins” and “Kool Aid & Frozen Pizza.” In
Balloonerism
, he clearly still holds onto this youth with a track like “Stoned” but with the added years that promote reflection and maturity on ideas that may have once been glossed over. Although “Stoned” talks about a “she” that is never identified (we do not know if this is a real person, Mac talking to himself, etc.), the rebellious act of smoking weed is connoted as a solution to “pain” rather than existing in a fun-loving vacuum.
There is an overwhelming realization on
Balloonerism
that much of the good of Mac’s life–the money, acclaim, fame and more — comes with the bad of criticism and overindulgence. “Rick’s Piano,” fittingly located at the end of the album, exudes this type of self-consciousness. With the refrain “the best is yet to come,” Miller is telling us and/or himself that regardless of what you may have thought of him at the time — between those who felt
K.I.D.S
(2009) was mindless but fun or songs like “Donald Trump” and “Missed Calls” were tacky — there is a truer form of himself that he had yet to realize. This is especially eerie considering the temporal context around
Balloonerism
. Similarly disarming is the figurative existentialism that the track concludes with, questioning the feeling of death in such a heavy manner that the circularity of the instrumental and construction of “Rick’s Piano” which precedes it feels as desperate as the aforementioned lyrical motif.
Mac still tries to leave room for playtime in the midst of all this doom and gloom with “5 Dollar Pony Rides,” which is a burst of energy that breaks up the first third of the album. Still, as Mac does best, there is a twinge of two-facedness to the sexual relationship described in the song; his female counterpart desires and/or needs Mac to fulfill gaps of happiness in her life that are irrelevant to him as a person, but that he can suffice regardless. And in this case, it is a father-figure. This is some weighty and burdensome stuff.
It is a somber conundrum that an album like
Balloonerism
feels like a creative breakthrough that was delayed for more misshapen output like
GO:OD AM
(2015) and
The Divine Feminine
(2016) and that it teased a potential that was aggressively realized through the force of his abrupt fatality. But the reality of life and death takes nothing away from an album that would have been as great 10 years ago as it is today.