Five takeaways from Mac Miller's final album 'Circles'

Mac Miller’s final album Circles bucks the trend for posthumous releases.

These days it’s pretty much guaranteed that a musician’s death won’t bring an end to their release history. However, posthumous releases are often scraped together from half-baked song ideas and suffer from hasty over-production.

Mac Miller’s Circles is an exception. The record was intended as a companion piece to 2018’s Swimming. Production was well under way prior to Mac (born Malcom McCormick)’s death in September 2018. And as his family said in a recent statement, the two records were designed to complement each other, completing a circle. “Swimming in Circles was the concept,” they said.

Listen to ‘Good News’ by Mac Miller

Swimming producer Jon Brion was on board and after Mac’s death he worked diligently to complete the project. Brion added the finishing touches “based on his time and conversations with Malcolm,” the family said.

Here are five takeaways from Circles, which is out now.

We should probably stop calling him “rapper Mac Miller”

Mac Miller was an instant success – his debut record, Blue Slide Park, went to number one in 2011. Though, it came out when he was just 19 and still trying to find his voice. As Pitchfork wrote, it was the sound of a kid “very much in love with hip-hop but frustratingly ill-equipped to translate his verve into compelling music.”

But Mac’s evolution was rapid and by the time of his fourth album, 2016’s The Divine Feminine, he’d branched out into jazz rap and cool pop/R&B. Circles is a cohesive document, but it’s by no means strictly a hip hop release. Miller sings as much as he raps and the likes of ‘Complicated’ and ‘I Can See’ are synth-laden dream pop numbers.

Love Hip Hop?

Get the latest Hip Hop news, features, updates and giveaways straight to your inbox Learn more

The lyrics paint a picture of Mac’s mental unrest

The LA County Coroner determined Miller’s cause of death to be an accidental overdose of fentanyl, cocaine and alcohol. His struggles with substance abuse were no secret and he’d referenced them in lyrics on past albums. Circles also shines a light on Mac’s inner demons.

“I cannot be changed, I cannot be changed, no/Trust me, I’ve tried,” he sings in the title track.

“Some people say they want to live forever/That’s way too long, I’ll just get through today,” he sings in ‘Complicated’.

“This mad world made me crazy/Might just turn around, do one-eighty,” goes the chorus to ‘Blue World’.

The guests are few and far between

Jon Brion produced or co-produced the whole record and receives a co-writing credit on half of its tracks. Outside of that, Disclosure’s Guy Lawrence designed the jittery dance number ‘Blue World’ and Beyonce and Ne-Yo collaborator Shea Taylor oversaw the moody ‘I Can See’.

YouTube bass playing celebrity MonoNeon grooves all over ‘Complicated’ and Prince band member Wendy Melvoin adds some tasty guitar licks to a selection of tracks. Most notably, however, is the inclusion of Melbourne rapper and musician Baro Sura.

Baro adds drums and vocals to the track ‘Hand Me Downs’. In a Twitter post, Baro described himself as a “super fan and friend” of Miller and spoke of his heartbreak at Mac’s passing.

There’s plenty to enjoy for Jon Brion fans

Producer and composer Brion has an impressively varied CV. Many will remember him as Fiona Apple’s offsider on 1999’s opus When the Pawn… Brion and Apple teamed up to make Apple’s next LP, Extraordinary Machine, but Brion’s maximalist orchestral arrangements didn’t sit well with the record company. The Brion version of the album was shelved, but bootlegs can be found online.

Brion’s also well known for his work on films such as Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind, I Heart Huckabees and Lady Bird. His partnership with Miller isn’t totally unprecedented, either. He was the primary producer on Kanye’s Late Registration and made his mark on three tracks from Frank Ocean’s Blonde.

While Circles is a relatively stripped back affair, there are plenty of trademark Brion-isms. This includes the use of vibraphone on ‘Circles’, Hammond organ on ‘Hands’, and classic pop piano playing on ‘That’s On Me’.

It includes a cover of Love’s ‘Everybody’s Gotta Live’

Mac’s transition into a heart-on-your-sleeve singer-songwriter is backed up by a piano-led cover of Love’s 1974 song ‘Everybody’s Gotta Live’. The song originally appeared on the sorely underappreciated American band’s final record, Reel to Real.

The Love original is a jaunty affair centred on acoustic guitar and songwriter Arthur Lee’s vocals. Mac changes its name to ‘Everybody’ and turns it into a lithe power ballad. It begins with just piano and vocals before stretching out to include bass and drums.