Mac Miller’s Ballonerism is post-humous bliss. The project is carefully put together and sewn around the hems so well almost seamless, it’s easy to forget it’s actually patchwork. In my experience posthumous projects have a lingering vaping feeling of just absence and loss as they hardly ever live up to the standard and quality we as music listeners and lovers would have grown accustomed from the artist.
Rarely does one listen to a posthumous project and they forget that the artist they’re listening to is no longer there because they died, posthumous projects normally suck truly and honestly. The main selling point of it all is listening to a post-humous project is supposed to feel like reading letters your deceased great aunt Susan left behind before she passed. However more often than not they appear to be a hurried compilation of unfinished songs by the artist to serve as a cash-grab for record labels to just cash in as much as they can before the artist’s lingering profitability vapours.
Adorned by fourteen tracks, the record moves from one track into the other, and even when it hits a high point, it seemingly recedes back to its melancholic vertebrate with sad and somber tones, mild and low bassline accompanied by low beating drums. Highly experimental, the first two tracks of the project have a sound designed to provoke one’s auditory senses and evoke some feeling in you when you listen, DJ’s Chord is one of those tracks that are a perfect illustration of Mac using and manipulating sound and sonic production to evoke feeling, emotion and perhaps something even deeper in the listener.
Started off by a punctuating sound from a chord organ, an instrument that [according to generative AI] due to its ability to produce rich, full chords that can evoke feelings of togetherness and joy. A good half of DJ’s Chord is lined with nothing but a blank canvas and a progression of sound that takes you from unnerved and on the edge into a state of a weird calm because even though there’s vocals and tambourine ambly and lazily percussing and intersecting through the blank canvas there’s nothing happy about the sound, that’s when you realise its actually a black canvas. Somewhere in the middle the song finally starts, and there’s a short-lived verse from SZA, but regardless the resounding experimental dark ambiance of the record continues as the track comes to a close and weaves into the next.
Verses from Mac on this project are depressive and dark as had come to be expected of him never having shied away from his battles with substance abuse and depression. The theme of coping with life’s struggles through substance and drug use is inescapable in this project, its in the music and its in the lyrical content whether explicitly or alluded to, the general energy and aura of that struggle is embedded into the lining of the record. Subjectivity aside, the presence of this overarching theme is unmistakably felt on the record, the heavy energy can be felt in almost every song, melancholic or not. In hip hop this is perhaps a very common theme that’s either intentionally discussed on records or the impact of it can be felt or its merely alluded to, but the way Mac does it feels different.
Its in the arrangement of his bars, the way he almost moves from one thing to the other like touch and go making his verses look like a bunch of single statement sentences that are stacked together to form a verse lacking cohesion but completing the circle on overall with the song. It’s in what he says, and the way he says it, it’s almost disturbingly clear to see that he wasn’t pretending, he wasn’t being a tourist, but this was really his life.
“Even pills turn to powder, baby
Can you sit right next to me and crush ’em down? (Crush ’em down)
…
Started smokin’ weed again, started tryna read again
Clean myself up, now would you be my friend?
…
What ya gonna do when the money comin’ slow?“
Ballonerism is an album comprised of tracks Mac Miller recorded during the period of 2014 and 2015, around that time is when he released GO:OD AM and Faces. It’s important to note that it’s difficult to escape this on-the-edge-teetering-feeling that makes your heart pound a little bit incessantly, and this is normally brought about by some sound (either chord or drums). A lot of Mac’s music served as a premonition to what would come to be: “I gave my life to this shit, already killed myself/Recently, I only meet peace when in deep sleep-Funny papers“
It’s not all sad on the album, there’s lighter moments where we experience Mac doing that Indie rap like over jazzy beats as he sings on 5 Dollar Pony Rides, this feels like the track that had to happen during that 2014/5 period for chart topping bopping 2018’s Dang from Swimming with Anderson .Paak to happen.
On tracks like funny papers, Mac delivers some pretty childlike surreal statements that are phrased in a memorable way that despite the fictional aspect of it, are pretty damn good for instance the chorus is laced with this imagery: “The moon’s wide awake with a smile on his face as he smuggles constellations in his suitcase.”
Despite the somewhat somber start Funny papers has and this sad undertone the song has, this is one of my favourite songs from the project. From the moment I listened to the project for the first time, there was just something special to me about funny papers, from the use of the word funny, to the sonic production of the song that’s introduced by piano keys and delirious Mac teasingly chiding someone for not knowing how to dance and into the beginning of the first verse “I saw his picture in the funny papers, Didn’t think anybody died on a Friday”.
The song comprises of Mac cleverly juxtaposing two stories he read from the funny papers with his existential crises and questions, he weaves in and out of verses and into the beautiful chorus about loving silence as everything is quiet but the music as the moon smuggles constellations in his suitcase. This happens in the backdrop of a combination of drums and piano that peeks in and out providing the song a classic finish. Funny papers comes to a close and Mac asks, why does it matter at all?
On Mrs. Debra Downer, Mac takes on the role of playing Mrs Debby as he poses questions that one would rather not really think about but somewhat does it in a digestible way. If pills can turn to powder, Then this world could turn to ash, Everything seems so slow But my past, I thought that it would last longer. On the second verse is when mac seemingly comes down from his high horse of being a leader not a navigator and admits and takes on the role of Debby as he admits he was given a treasure map that doesn’t have a mark to show where the treasure is, rendering it pretty pointless because that’s like looking for a drop in the ocean, it’s a needle in a haystack.
“Do I need to know the beginning to see the end?
What’s the difference ‘tween the truth and things that we pretend?
I lie awake faded, watch the days go by
And only at the lows do I chase that high
Fear God, stay humble
Original sin, we all come from the same struggle“
There’s this thing where artists make a record that feels so wholesome it extends beyond just being a piece of music but a whole project of art. From the moment the project starts it takes you on a journey or a ride where it builds up to a climax and recedes coming to a close, every track is a piece of a puzzle, its like if an album is a house, every brick is aligning with another to build this big thing that makes sense as a whole called a house. A house that will stand the tests of time, provide haven and habitat to generation after generation but still standing strong and unchanged, resilient to weather and weathering, resilient to the changes in real estate trends, permanent. Despite having lighter moments on the album [Balloonerism], the light just isn’t bright enough to change the hue in this dim house. As the record comes to an end there’s the last track Tomorrow will never know, a song with an inescapable and unnerving haunting undertone and overtone driven by the sonic production and abstract, dark depressive lyrical content with a recurring motif of an automated voicemail and ringtone in the background that is ultimately never answered.
The song is eleven minutes long, and a good part of it is driven by this instrumentation that’s raw and dingy, very triggering auditory sounds that just stimulate your nervous system into anxiety, the last three minutes of the song is when the eerie-haunt meter is really dialed up a notch as there’s nothing but sounds of kids playing in the background and the sound of an unattended to and unanswered phone ringing eventually accompanied by more auditory production that just lets you know, that he’s gone.
