Hi, everyone. Justthony Woketano, the internet's earliest music nerd. And it's time for a review of this new Mac Miller album, Balloonerism.

Right here we have the second full length posthumous album from the late singer rapper songwriter producer Mr. Mac Miller. Handily one of the most beloved rappers of his generation, and a guy who managed to stay true to his sound, to the very tragic end.

The music world was utterly shocked when he passed due to an overdose in 2018, and it's sad to acknowledge that this was just one of many such occurrences around this time, as issues around addiction and depression and mental health broadly go unaddressed in the music industry to this day.

And Mac's struggles really brought the problem into full view, especially considering they were a central theme on his last album proper, Swimming. But he was nothing if not prolific, though, even in his darkest times, because in 2018 he also had nearly a whole 'nother album complete, which just needed some additional production retooling to see a proper release.

Of course, I'm talking about the 2020 record Circles, his first posthumous album, of course, a great record that really saw him fully embracing his singer songwriter side. Not to mention, the album most definitely surpassed the very low bar of expectations set by most posthumous rap records that seemingly are thrown out there for quick cash grabs and don't really have a whole lot of flattering material on them.

And similarly, Balloonerism seems like a whole lot of care went into assembling this project. And the music also serves as a reminder, too, of what could have been. – even if this record and its material come from a much earlier point in Mac Miller's discography.

So first, I have to take it back to 2011 to talk about the music on this record, which was a pretty big year for Mac Miller. In fact, it's crazy to look back at something like the XXL Freshman Class for that year, where he stands shoulder to shoulder with the likes of Kendrick Lamar, Lil B, Big Krit, YG and Wiz Khalifa. The past ten years of rap history hadn't happened yet, so everyone on that cover at the time was poised to become the biggest voice of their generation, and widespread commercial appeal is certainly what Mac was shooting for on his debut commercial studio album that dropped that year, Blue Slide Park, which had a decidedly poppier and sleeker sound compared to the mixtapes that made him such a breakout artist, and the project wasn't super well received among many of his fans. He himself acknowledged this I wasn't really all that crazy about it. Though, I will say "A Party on Fifth Avenue" pretty much paved the way for "Thrift Shop" by Macklemore. He kind of wrote that song for that dude.

However, tracks like that wouldn't be predictive in terms of terms of where Mac's sound would eventually go. In fact, Mac's musical pursuits past this point would get more experimental, left field, adventurous, moody, even while his next record Watching Movies with the Sound Off was by no means perfect, it was definitely more reflective of his creatively eccentric tendencies, and the projects Mac released around this era of his career were really his most beloved at the time.

Good AM was my personal favorite when it came out. 2014's Faces mixtape has pretty much gone down as one of the most legendary mixtapes of the 2010s, and Balloonerism here basically comes from this same era.

Now, I've personally always felt that this weirder era of Mac's discography, while it was more interesting than Blue Slide Park, could have always gone further. Again, Watching Movies, for example, is not quite as odd as some of the sounds and ideas that inspired it, or even many of Mac's collaborators at the time, but the material on Balloonerism is Mac fully going left field and pulling very few punches. It's actually kind of wild how dark and out there a lot of the material on this project is.

The short intro track on the record is giving us nothing other than some rattling tambourine, and on the second track of the record, "DJ's Chord Organ, Mac is just going in full producer mode as he takes us on a linear odyssey with gentle vocal harmonies from Thundercat. Not to mention, the lone verse on this song is from SZA over a decade ago, and the core sample on this thing is apparently an organ chord that comes off of an old Daniel Johnston record, which no wonder the aesthetic of the track is giving weird, low fi indie singer songwriter vibes.

And while it seems almost like a random idea in the abstract, it's actually more of a tone setter than you might think in terms of what is to come on the rest of the album, as we're in for a lot of textured and imaginative production on this track list, and the storytelling paints a picture of someone who's been up driving for days, is essentially wired says also makes mention of cocaine and many of the verses on this record, especially in the second half, tell us about people who are kind of running but with no direction in mind, and also looking to drugs to escape their troubles and their stresses.

That's pretty much the stage that is being set by the following track, "Do You Have a Destination?" One of many songs whose production is credited to Mac's alter ego, Larry Fisherman, and there are many other co-production credits on this record too, from Thundercat, whose stellar bass playing is all over this album. And this song is nothing if not evocative. I mean, remember 2014 – this is a point in Mac's life with his career where he should like, be riding high, but the emotions that he's showcasing on this track, for the most part, he feels lost and disillusioned, unhappy with absolutely chilling bars like "I gave my life to this shit / Already killed myself."

But then, true to his dark and absurd style of humor, later on the track, he makes sure he leaves space to really tell us, really drive home his love of cereal. And once again, the production on this track is crazy. The drums are huge and booming. They sound like planets crashing into each other. There are some great melodic licks and embellishments in the production too that are fantastic. Some icy piano chords, ghostly vocal chants that are really haunting, and the quality continues onto "5 Dollar Pony Rides", which is some really moody, chill heavy jazz rap that once again is dealing in escapism, rattling tambourines and really dynamic electric piano essentially soundtrack the story of a girl who is very stressed, quite secretive. Her and Mac seemingly have some kind of past, and he's trying to create some kind of reprieve where they can, uh, both let off some steam. Escapism continues as a major plot point, but with kind of a mental health tie in on the following friendly hallucinations where production wise, we have more dark, loose, jazzy beats with some wailing keys in the background that feel very Odd Future esque, very Pharrell.

Mac also pens some very low key but snappy mantras, saying "it's only real if it's real to you", as once again he comes across as being infatuated with some girl that is going through something hard in her life, really dealing with a mental break of sorts. And while a lot of his focus is on another person dealing with their own problems, this track in a way, does feel like a vehicle for him to address things that are going on in his own life, too.

I mean, once more on the following track, "Deborah Downer", we have escapism mixed with drugs, specifically downers. As Deborah Downer is your typical musical archetype, where you are speaking of a drug as if it's a person, and the music and vibes of this track are by no means celebratory. It really reflects the sad reality of the situation, especially as Mac sings these very sad and eerie refrains of what are you going to do when the money's coming slow? What are you going to do when your lifestyle is essentially writing checks that you can't cash?

The song "Stoned" also leans into drugs as a means of escapism, but because it's weed, it feels like the stakes are a lot lower. In fact, this track is really like one of the happier and more carefree moments on the record comparatively, and actually has quite the memorable chorus.

Past this point in the second half, I feel like the record is less cohesive conceptually, and even though it is a little more all over the place, it's no less intriguing. The mood of the album kind of picks up, too, as Mac embraces his sense of humor a bit more like on the opening moments of "Shangri-La", where he has a kind of odd spoken word intro before the song busts into droning keys and crass, flippant bars about wanting to pay his drug dealer with a credit card.

Then "Funny Papers" is easily one of the most beautiful, touching and sentimental songs I think Mac has ever written. It kicks off with this silly intro where he's, like, mimicking a British accent, asking somebody why they don't know how to dance and how everyone knows how to dance. He sort of sounds like a weird character in a musical from the 1940s or 50s. The track is packed with gorgeous bass and piano chords, and lyrically, he kind of tells different stories about different stages of life a baby just being born, a guy who is essentially crashing out in the most tragic of ways after a divorce. This track also features some of the most poetic bars on the entire record, with Mac saying "The mind go with age, don't surrender / My mistake / I replaced all of my remembers." There are also some third person descriptions of himself on the track that feel very MF doom inspired.

The song "Excelsior" is a track that is all is all about lost innocence as you transition out of childhood. How at one point in Mac's life, his truest enemies were spinach and Brussels sprouts. And then we contrast pretty hard into the following "Transformations". Which is not quite as deep, really a product of its time, and features Mac rapping under the Delusional Thomas alias. Artistically, it feels like a sidequest on this project, as we get more crass bars, that feel very Odd Future, also very Quasimoto the Unseen.

With "Mannequins" vocally and instrumentally having so much in common with his forthcoming album, Swimming. It's another cut on this record that is just dark, funny, and also just so predictive. Every bar on this track feels like Mac's own little piece of life philosophy, whether he's rapping about his own personal fear of ending up normal, or people just broadly learning from the changes they experience in the world, and, relatively speaking, the song "Rick's Piano" is one of the funnier and honestly more hopeful moments on the record. I mean, there are some points on this track where it is a little at odds with itself, but it's pretty clear that he is really trying to lean into the idea of the best being yet to come, artistically speaking, and he does, in his own way, come across as very driven and hungry on this track, as he insists that his fans and listeners not tell him that he's famous and successful, that he has made it essentially because once he accepts that, he'll become lazy and he won't work as hard and he won't do as well.

And true to this album's very experimental spirit, it finishes off with the 11 minute "Tomorrow Will Never Know", which is maybe the biggest and most intensely dark track of Mac's career, as he reports from the most grim recesses of his mind. I mean, a lot of this song really comes across as like a mood piece where he's having an internal dialog with himself and God, and is really reaching a breaking point of sorts. There are some just straight up instrumental passages of the track that honestly, I'm not that crazy about, as the drums and bass and guitar come across as a bit too loose and directionless. But I will say the final moments that the track eventually heads into, with the endlessly ringing phone and the lone bassline and the audio of kids playing, it's all genuinely unnerving, it's like a very strange ambient piece. So while musically this may not be my favorite moment on the record, I will say emotionally it's one of the heaviest points of impact.

But yeah, overall, Balloonerism is very much a great album, and it speaks to Mac's creativity and talent that he had yet another killer posthumous album hidden in the vault here. And once again, like I said earlier, this record is really like a what if moment. Because, comparatively speaking, it is most definitely more out there and challenging in comparison with the commercial stuff Mac put out that actually saw the light of day. Even a lot of the material on Faces. And I sort of wonder where his career could have gone, or how his trajectory could have been perceived if a project like this ended up getting released alongside that mixtape, or maybe put out in 2015 or something.

But yeah, very much impressed and surprised with how great this project came out. Especially again given how mid most posthumous records are. Which is why I'm feeling a decent to strong 8 on this one.

Anthony Fantano. Mac Miller. Forever.