Tonight, the rapper will perform to a sold-out Town Ballroom in Buffalo with support from Los Angeles rapper and Odd Future affiliate Domo Genesis along with quickly rising singer/rapper GoldLink, whose danceable, funky style draws from 90’s r&b as well as golden-era hip hop. Doors open at 7pm, music starts at 8.

The post Tonight: Mac Miller first appeared on buffaBLOG.

You log onto Spotify. You click the search bar. You frantically type in “mac.” You realize you could have probably just typed in “M” because what bigger “M” artist is there than Mac Miller? Your hand starts to shake as you click on the name, which may as well have been inscribed in #ffd700. After a quick scroll, you’re in.

You try and double click on the intro track, “Doors,” but you miss the second click and have to repeat the process all over again. You miss the second attempt.“Fuck,” you utter to the empty room. You take a sip of the Miller Light classic logo aluminum bottle-can that you’ve fetched from the mini-fridge. It was originally intended for the most serene listening experience, however, now it’s become a tool to calm your nervous hands, just as it did at Alfred a couple years ago before that huge exam. Lucky for you, (well, luck and a sip of that cold can,) your third attempt renders you successful and the fun begins.

“FUCK!”

You forgot to turn on the speakers, as you watch the time of the song tick by silently. Your hands, already trembling from the excitement that comes with a new “Larry Fisherman” album, yank desperately at the chords coming off of the JBL powerhouses that you used your parents’ money to buy at the campus bookstore 6 years ago. You follow the chord, and after a taxing journey that involved finishing the first half of that aluminum rocket by your side, you reach the computer tower. Still plugged in.

“Fuck.”

You have a flashback to that wicked game of slap-cup you had down in this very basement last Thursday night. Oh man it was great. I mean you guys didn’t drink as much as you did back in those legendary college days, but most of the night was the same, Jake brought the addies, Max drank more than his already huge body should be able to hold, and Ralph. Fucking pussy ass “oh I don’t wanna go home with her she’s too drunk” Ralph. Went to slap a cup that was completely full. And of course, almost ALL of the beer ended up on the speakers, completely fucking up the “Pabst and Jazz” by Asher Roth jam sesh you had going on.

So instead, it’s going to be the laptop. You turn it on. And wait. And wait. You finish your brewski. In the short time you take to consider grabbing another one, you look your vintage Rusty Wallace fathead in the eyes as if to ask the Miller Lite number 2 car driver permission to “beer up.” You crack that baby open, and Windows Vista opens up. The little golden lab stares at you as if it’s making fun of you for forgetting the password.

“Fuck…”

Okay so maybe it isn’t happening right now. You know your dad is upstairs and gets upset when you listen to your “cool” music; and while you don’t know why, you know that he’s vying for your banishment from your dorm-themed basement. He just doesn’t get that this album is gonna prove, for sure, that Mac Miller is more than just “frat boy” music. This shit is probably gonna be like the next Beatles or something, you know, if they were still alive.

“Man, you know what? I haven’t played Gears of War in like… months,” you think, as you move on to the next chapter of your day.

Grade: N/A

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It’s a reasonable fear that Miller will forever be taken as a joke, an artist with no artistry, but those who say so just aren’t listening. He’s become innovative in a genre that tends to thrive on either long-term consistency or the newest fad. Miller’s singing has also shown drastic improvement, though not displayed on this song in particular. Melancholy melodies and pop culture references have become Mac’s steez, and save for Yung Lean, there’s no one really out there with that style. Peep “Diablo” below, and be on the look for new visuals from Mac Meezey.

The post Mac Miller – “Diablo” first appeared on buffaBLOG.

And yet here we are, Mac’s almost a year removed from a critically acclaimed album and on the cusp of a critically acclaimed mixtape. He has scored collaborations with the likes of UGK legend Bun B, kind of-legend/anomaly Jay Electronica, and consensus top 2 rapper on the planet Kendrick Lamar. He’s befriended Kendrick, has a significant friendship with ScHoolboy Q and Ab-Soul, frequently collaborates with rap messiah Earl Sweatshirt, and is becoming one of the most reliable producers in the business. Mother’s Day saw the release of Faces, a 24 track mixtape that has already garnered buzz as one of the best hip hop releases of the year, with features from Earl, Rick Ross, and Mike Jones (Who?) among others, and several ad-libs courtesy of Soulo and Q.

The second track, “Here We Go,” serves as Mac’s assertion that he is and will continue to be a force on the rap scene. After an opening verse talking about his rap accomplishments, relative to other up and comers, he declares “I did it all without a Drake feature!” and follows that with the chorus “So many things that I’ve created, but this right here might be my favorite.” Back in Pittsburgh, Mac was signed to Rostrum Records, the same label as Wiz Khalifa, but their rises were independent of each other. Although not necessarily confined to Drake, making the leap into rap industry sometimes is just all about getting that big feature, and that’s something Mac never really had or needed. It is pretty noteworthy that this random white kid who was once a joke is now getting buzz as one of the premier new rap powers.

A common theme we’ve seen in this new Mac is his fascination with drugs and his perpetual use of them, and entire songs on this project serve as a look into his at times abusive and self-loathing life. The fifth track, “Malibu,” is a particularly startling look into Mac’s mindset. Lines like “I’m the only suicidal motherfucker with a smile on,” coupled with others like “At the rate I’m getting high it’ll be hard to find tomorrow, I just pray that I’ll survive tomorrow,” and “They was all laughing, it wasn’t that funny, I started fucking with drugs, and now I’m a junky.”paint the portrait of a young artist, turning to substance to counter the pressures of their new life.

We’ve seen this plenty of times before, and unfortunately, it oftentimes leads to great music. Recent reports are that Mac became a lean addict following criticism of his debut album Blue Slide Park, and very recently, Mac said that he turned to harder drugs like coke and heroin in his depression. His emotional and psychological state has fingerprints all over this project and his recent ones before it.

With Mac though, there is a balance between the ultra depressing and humorously happy. On “What Do You Do,” featuring swag-king Sir Michael Rock,  he compares his drug habit to Phillip Seymour Hoffman’s, and a couple of lines later, he talks about doing drive-bys on razor scooters. He’s morbidly mature yet blissfully immature at the same time, and it keeps his at-times depressing lyrics from getting stale.

“New Faces,” featuring Earl Sweatshirt and frequent collaborator Da$h is one of the best big-time rap tracks I’ve heard this year. Earl, under his production moniker RandomBlackDude, stirs up a fantastic beat that is organ based and sounds so uniquely Odd-Future-ish. Earl goes in first on it, with an aggressive flow unlike what we’re used to with him, as he talks about his come up and his place in the game. His trademark assonance and crisp rhymes provide for on of the most pleasing 16s I’ve heard from him in a minute. The least known feature on the project, Da$h, follows up Earl with a similarly themed verse. His flow is like a combination of Earl and Vince Staples (who also appears on the mixtape) with a little bit of added nastiness. He really does impress here, and I’ve heard him before on other songs with these guys and this is the first time he’s stood out. Mac closes out the song with one of his best verses on the project, maybe even in his career. It’s a depiction of his drug use, which is where he seems to display his best artistry. “Isn’t he dizzy off them ups and downs, got a little Whitney put it in the blunt for now, she’s supposed to get me high, why the fuck I wanna die now?” Mac opens the verse. He’s honed his figurative language craft over the years, and this line is just an instance.

The great tracks on this project are great, but there is 24 tracks on it so all of them aren’t gonna be of the highest quality. A song like “Wedding,” while having a pretty cool beat, is a love song that I don’t really have aspirations of hearing again. It’s okay, but why listen to that when I could listen to the first relevant Mike Jones feature in 8 years on “Uber.” On this song, Mike Jones catches Mac Miller’s girl sneaking around on him, and lets Mac know what the deal is. We always knew Mike Jones was a bro.

It’s got a lot of great production from Mac, who handles most of the tracks on here. He gets jazzy with some songs and experimental with others, but is constantly showing off his versatility behind the boards. Somehow, the same artist who had hit songs with names like “Kool Aid and Frozen Pizza” and “Senior Skip Day,” put out his second straight deep, layered, thought-provoking project. With Faces, the highs are very high, and the lows aren’t that low. For a project with 24 songs, that’s quite the feat, and it’s resulted in one of the most impressive big-name rap projects of the year thus far.

Grade: A-

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