The Mac Miller Estate starts the year off strong for music. Balloonerism, the second posthumous album in his catalog, released on the 17th, and has received a multitude of success, debuting at number 3 on the Billboard’s Top 200. Both fans and critics seem to be very pleased by the new, 14 track long, beautifully crafted record.
Balloonerism is experimental. Originally it was recorded in 2014, although it never saw the light of day until its recent release and it was far different from any other project he had made around the time. Many fans consider the era of his music to be his creative peak.
Right from the start the experimentation comes into play with a 33 second long vocaless intro with only tambourines, fittingly named ‘Tambourine Dream’ and the strangeness of the album continues going into the second track ‘DJ’s Chord Organ ft. SZA’. The track has no verses from Mac, but the lyrics from SZA begin to form the main narrative of the album.
Finally 6 minutes into the project we hear directly from Mac Miller himself. On the third track, ‘Do You Have Destination’ he reveals the major theme of the Balloonerism while referring to his musical career, “I gave my life to this, already killed myself,” comparing his round-the-clock work ethic to suicide. There are many lines later on that would make similar comparisons such as saying, “I’m a slave to the bass line.”
The next two songs ‘5 Dollar Pony Rides’ and ‘Friendly Hallucinations’ talk of a girl’s issues asking, “How long has it been since you smiled?” Both tracks feel like a projection coming directly from Mac Miller as in the 6th song ‘Mrs. Debrah Downer’ he goes on to say, “Yeah, nothing is impossible,” which seems to be sarcastic considering the name of the track calling him a downer along with the song’s overall negative tone.
He attempts to adjust to his new workaholic life-style in tracks 7 and 8 in a not so healthy way; The first of the two being the called ‘Stoned’ where it’s clear his mental state is much better. In the track he claims his usage of drugs is all he needed to solve his issues, but in the next song ‘Shangri-La’ it becomes abundantly clear he was only causing more damage. ‘Stoned’ really represents that initial high he gained at the start of his addiction, with ‘Shangri-La’ showing the sad reality of his drug problem.
The final stretch of Balloonerism though, is where Mac’s message starts to shine. ‘Excelsior,’ the 10th track, Mac goes on to reminisce on a time of his youth on the playground, but as the song goes on his child self slowly starts to see the harsh realities of the world. It seems sad but ultimately he realizes that the only true way to cope with his current work and life balance is to embrace the tendencies that made life so enjoyable for him as a child, with him repeatedly saying silly words at the end of the song like “Abracadabra,” “Vadacadous,” and finally “Excelsior.”
The album goes on for another 4 songs with a general theme being consistent between all of them. He has a new found desire to improve and continue to try his hardest in his music. Track 13, called ‘Rick’s Piano,’ encapsulates this perfectly with his repeated lyric, “The best is yet to come.”