Balloonerism

Posthumous rap albums can often feel opportunistic: indiscriminate grab bags cobbled together for one last payday. But <i>Balloonerism</i>—the second album from the beloved musician since his death in 2018, released two days ahead of what would have been his 33rd birthday—is far from an assemblage of cutting-room floor scraps. Culled from a single week of extended jam sessions (according to close collaborators), the album is considered to be Mac Miller’s “lost project,” recorded between his 2013 album <i>Watching Movies with the Sound Off</i> and his 2014 mixtape <i>Faces</i>—arguably the most pivotal year of his creative evolution. “It is a project that was of great importance to Malcolm, to the extent that he commissioned artwork for it,” read a statement from Miller’s estate confirming the official release in fall 2024, noting the unofficial bootleg versions that have circulated through the years.

There’s only one voice besides Miller’s across <i>Balloonerism</i>’s 14 deep and dreamy tracks—that of SZA, his longtime friend, who appears on “DJ’s Chord Organ,” a heady track credited to Miller’s production alter ego Larry Fisherman that borrows a chord organ once belonging to lo-fi folk hero Daniel Johnston. Otherwise, Miller goes his own way, probing life’s great mysteries with modesty and good humor. The rattle of a tambourine echoes through the album, produced in part by Thundercat, as do Miller’s preoccupations with death as a concept, a puzzle, a voyeuristic spectacle, and, finally, life’s ultimate trip. “What does death feel like?” he wonders repeatedly on “Rick’s Piano,” believed to have been recorded at Rick Rubin’s Shangri-La studio. And on the hushed and haunting epic “Tomorrow Will Never Know,” he looks down at himself from a distant God’s-eye view and arrives at the enlightened conclusion: “Living and dying are one and the same.”

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