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12th Edition
August 14th 2018
Mac Miller
"Swimming"
Malcolm James McCormick, better known as Mac Miller is a surprisingly young dude, for all he has achieved. At just twenty-six years old, he has released five albums since 2011, had a cameo with Snoop Dogg on 'Scary Movie 5', and an incredible eight tours in the span of the last seven year. He's also worked along side the likes of Statik Selektah, Wiz Khalifa, Ab-Soul, Earl Sweatshirt, and Pharrell among others. He owns his own record label, REMember Music, which he is signed under with the help of Warner Bros. Music. He is also a record producer under the alias Larry Fisherman.
Born in Pittsburgh, Philadelphia on January 19, 1992, he started rapping at the age of fourteen but got really serious about it when he was fifteen and decided to make it a career ever since. He taught himself to play piano, guitar, drums, and bass. He was part of the rap group The Ill Spoken with fellow Pittsburgh rapper, Beedie. The Ill Spoken released a mixtape before he released two mixtapes of his own shortly after. In 2009 at the age of seventeen, he made it to the final four of an MC competition entitled 'Rhyme Calisthenics'. Shortly thereafter, he was signed to Rostrum Records in early 2010, and then won two awards at the Pittsburgh Hip Hop Awards.
He's been rolling with the big boys ever since. 'Swimming' is his fifth offering, released on August 3, 2018. With thirteen songs totaling at fifty-eight minutes, the album has no feature rappers but has a few vocal contributions by Dâm-Funk, Hynes, Snoop Dogg, Syd, Thundercat and J.I.D. However, it includes a vast line up of producers providing the instrumentals including Dâm-Funk, Flying Lotus, Pomo, I.D. Labs, and a bunch more. Executively produced by his own pseudonym, Larry Fisherman.
Mac Miller - 'Self Care' Music Video
Unfortunately, all these producers couldn't save the album from his mediocre singing and average rapping. The (I'm assuming) Dâm-Funk produced track 'What's the Use?' has a really nice driving funky rhythm, however, when Mac Miller starts singing/rapping, it sounds like he's trying too hard to sound like Anderson .Paak, but failing terribly at it. The song 'Ladders' has a similarly sweet funky beat (after it finally kicks in after the 1:10 minute mark), yet the track is brought down to a boring track with his singing. The rapping is decent at times for the track. The rest of the album makes me feel like I'm in some codeine-infused 'purple drank' nightmare. If it wasn't for the two aforementioned tracks, this would be a pretty boring album as a whole.
Mac Miller on NPR's 'Tiny Desk'
What do you think? Are you a fan of Mac Miller? How does it compare to his previous releases? Honestly, I'm relieved that I'm done with this review. The fifty-eight minutes felt like three hours! I have to bring up my spirits now by listening to some Ragga-Jungle. I'm looking forward to next week's review. He's one of my favorite Hip Hop producers! Can you guess what album I'll be reviewing? Drop a comment below. One Love!
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