Mac Miller
Circles
Warner
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Mac Miller’s posthumous record Circles was released on January 17th by Warner Music just two days before what would’ve been his 28th birthday. It is a companion record to 2018’s Swimming, my favorite album of that year.

Swimming is vibrant and full of life. Miller used the change of timbre in his vocals and echoes to give his lyricism punches and kicks all along and they hit the hardest on Swimming. His talent as a producer and creator in the studio, not just as a writer and performer, is accented by a league of players. His chosen artistic circle (Earl Sweatshirt, Flying Lotus, Schoolboy Q, Pharrell) helped elevate his music and welcomed Miller’s curiosity of sound and producing. Circles is Miller exploring what more he could do as a recording artist.

The music on Circles is the sound of Miller plunging into change. Not quite a straightforward hip-hop record but not quite an R&B album, it is a mix of his own interests and what they could’ve morphed into. Swimming was an outline of what was to come and Circles is the annotated breakdown.

Swimming is open, honest, and full of self-reflection. It debuted at number three on the Billboard charts and was nominated for Best Rap Album at the 2019 Grammys. Miller died almost a month to the day after its release, with the cause of death officially announced as an accidental drug overdose. He didn’t even get a chance to tour the record. Swimming was lauded by fans and critics alike. It’s a time capsule.

“We are left to imagine where Malcolm was going,” Miller’s family wrote in a statement on his Instagram feed, “and to appreciate where he was.” They approached producer-composer Jon Brion (Fiona Apple, Aimee Mann, Elliott Smith) to finish the work the two had started so they could release Circles.

Almost every lyric on Circles is tied to time, youth, age, and what comes next. On the opener “Complicated,” he says, “I’m way too young to be getting old.” On “Woods” he swoons “things like this aren’t built to last / I might just fade like those before me.” Miller covers Arthur Lee’s 1972 song “Everybody’s Gotta Live” with “Everybody.” The lyrics are simple and now feel mournful: “everybody’s gotta live / everybody’s gotta die / everybody’s gotta live / I think you know the reason why.”

Circles will always be tainted with Miller’s death, and the loss of a talent that was only just starting to change color. It’s hard to hear anything else when you listen to the record. Making the comparison to Swimming is effortless in its sound and scheme. Brion said in a recent interview that Miller approached him with all of this music, and more, at the same time. It had been floating around in Miller’s head. He was, as they say, swimming in circles.

The instrumentation is full-bodied, most of it performed by Brion himself. The slow piano, the trickle and tickle of drum machines, the doo-wop sample on “Blue World” married to the modern day synth oscillation give Circles textures to pick up and run your fingers over, something you can hand to someone else because they haven’t seen it before. But the lyrics confirm my darkest suspicion, that Miller might have known what was coming. On “I Can See” Miller sings “heaven too far when you live in a basement /...I need someone to save me before I drive myself crazy.” The songs aren’t quite exactly upbeat. He was finally slowing down and flushing it out.

There’s a slur in Mac’s voice on the album-opening title track. His voice takes the same shape as he displayed during his NPR Tiny Desk performance released just a month before his death. It is a fabulous, focused performance. He is humble, quiet, and seems so aware of how close everyone is and how loudly they’re cheering. Thundercat’s bass work is almost distracting. Mac’s rapping is effortless. He is a charming, talented young man. That same murmur is still there at the end of Circles on “Surf.” He didn’t need to sharpen his words for them to have meaning. It was his delivery that always put things into focus and the melodies that made it glow.

I will come right out and say it. Mac is gone, it’s sad, and listening to Circles is taxing. Every line is a reminder that he’s no longer with us. It will live on forever as an epilogue of his life no matter how much time passes. Everything was just starting to bubble up and I already miss the lifetime of art he’ll never get to make. We miss you Mac. RIP.

Notable Tracks: "Blue World" | “Circles” | "Everybody" | “I Can See”

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