When I first listened to Faces, Mac Miller’s spacey 2014 project, I was convinced he was gone for good. Its chromatic instrumentation and Mac’s drug-plagued slang illuminated the narcotic purgatory in which he had taken up residence. The mixtape’s aura was bleak, casually despondent, and the rapper seemed to acquiesce to his hedonistic habits too easily. But for the first time, it felt like he had some creative coherence; the winding, multifaceted project was excellent. Rumors that Mac had been tweaking his technical rapping abilities were substantiated in the most gratifying way possible.
It was so good, in fact, that Warner Brothers signed Mac to a $10 million dollar deal in October 2014. Fans of the Pittsburgh rapper and his Most Dope Family grew anxious. What would this mean? Was Mac, after an impressive, extended run with independent labels, finally selling out? The few freestyles and soundbites he released on SoundCloud, though very good, revealed nothing.
GO:OD AM, which dropped on September 18, is an elegant shift from Faces – not an about-face, but close. Things had changed. Mac had access to all the resources in the world compared to his independent-label releases. He had massive expectations to live up to. He was clean, for the most part, which he accomplished by holing up at Rick Rubin’s house in Malibu for weeks at a time. And for a 23-year-old, he had been through a lot. The biggest question for listeners, especially after Faces, was the vibe. What kind of attitude would Mac bring to the project, his first on a major label?
The answer, in brief, is self-assured. Mac’s tropes are compelling and his flows assorted. On “Brand Name,” he reflects on the legitimacy of his ascent in the rap game- “It ain’t nothin’ but a brand name/ to everyone but us” – with sharp, truncated lines over a swaying beat anchored firmly in the hook. He waxes metaphysical on an unhurried, ethereal sound on “Ascension,” treating religious and terrestrial themes side-by-side while Travis Scott quietly wails “between heaven and hell,” two settings that Mac revisits often on the album. On the shapeshifting bass-slapper “When in Rome,” he flaunts his influence and possessions, deftly slipping into one cadence and out of another like a pair of Dunks. And there are a few bangers on the album. This isn’t a shock to fans that have heard the Rick Ross-featured “Insomniak” off of Faces, but Mac sounds legitimately hostile on repetitive, obstinately grandiose instrumentals like “Cut the Check.” The song belongs to drill-music savant Chief Keef, who has made a living off barking unintelligible words on this sort of soundscape, but it’s shocking that Mac is almost as believable.
The production is, for the most part, masterful. Sure, that’s generally expected on a major-label album, the personnel responsible for most of the sounds are not household names. Mac enlisted Pittsburgh producer ID Labs for six tracks and Wiz Khalifa affiliate Big Jerm for another. The other ten tracks belong to more acclaimed producers – Tyler, the Creator, Frank Dukes, Thundercat, DJ Dahi, Vinylz. It’s not surprising that Mac’s flow sounds consistently concise over the wide range of tones on the album. In an industry where it’s not uncommon for rapper and producer to make a song from opposite coasts, Mac prefers to record songs with the producer on hand, much like a French Montana-Harry Fraud dynamic. Perhaps this emphasis on chemistry explains why the best tracks on the album are produced by ID Labs.
The collection is not without weak spots. Some would argue that the meandering, predictably upbeat poppy anthem “Weekend” featuring Miguel is a token slow song. But it seems like Mac wasted a track on an album that, at seventy minutes long, is already exhausting to absorb in its entirety. The eight-minute “Perfect Circle/God Speed” starts off with an unforgiving, Morricone-inspired western beat that has Mac reflecting on his ascent and his habits – “I moved up from a private to a sergeant, you can see it in the scar face/hidden in a dark place, swimming in the shark tank.” But the shootout-evoking trance abruptly evolves into an organ-fueled confessional. The two sections may stand by themselves as separate tracks – particularly the incisive first section – but it feels like Mac is overreaching.
In general, though, Mr. McCormick shines. The album sounds professional, curated, deliberate. His thoughtful selection of features – especially Lil B and Little Dragon – pays off. Album standouts include the Southern, bluesy “Rush Hour”; “Two Matches,” the latest in a line of rambling, melodic Mac-TDE collaborations; and “Ascension,” the sincere, wonderfully celestial sonic construction Mac uses to explore questions of being. There are well-wrought outros on nearly every song, containing a mixture of skits and chants. At best, his flow is butter; at worst, it’s a bunch of biting non-sequiturs that you’ll whip out during a cypher. Most notably, the introspection that partially defined Faces has not disappeared. Quite the opposite – Mac is painfully conscious of the choices and events that formed his present self, and his constant reference to them demonstrates maturity heretofore unseen.
In short, GO:OD AM is a very good major label debut. There is a song for every vibe – windows-down cruising, Saturday turnup, late-night essay grinding, quiet introspection, moments of regret, existential ponderings. Fans who were never enthralled by the high, teenager-like quality of Mac’s voice likely won’t be appeased by his latest effort. But everything that Mac could change, he did. The result of his intense self-examination, the refinement of his lyrical abilities and his patience with the pressure of a major label debut is an achievement. The nebulous, illogical cohesion of Faces is nowhere to be found here. Instead, Mac has strung together seventeen tracks of significance, united in their demonstration of his deserved status in the upper echelon of today’s rap game.