has him turning into the most boring type of major label rapper: a J. Without the lure of parties or the agoraphobic agony of drugs, Miller’s first album for Warner Bros. “the first album I recorded while being happy in a long time,” an opportunity for him to face addiction, insomnia and his tortured insides with clarity on songs like “Weekend.” It’s easily his most mature work – but that doesn’t necessarily mean it’s his most entertaining. Now, as the 23-year-old says on his third studio album, it’s time to “man up.” He calls GO:OD A.M. He may be unable to escape his own head, as he laments on the opener “Come Back to Earth,” but he’s decided to make himself as comfortable as possible while he’s trapped there.Rapper Mac Miller emerged in 2011 like a weeded fratboy frosh looking for the best party, and came out of 2013 like a depressive college radio MC laboring over his best rhymes. Swimming is less virtuosic than those artists’ recent works, but no less heartfelt, and the album’s wistful soul and warm funk fits Miller like his oldest, coziest hoodie.
Modest as it is, his voice is expressive in ways his plainspoken prose could never be, capturing his resignation without turning sadness into a performative spectacle.Īs always, Miller remains a step behind the prestige artists he emulates- Chance the Rapper, Anderson.Paak, and, increasingly, Frank Ocean, whose nonchalant songcraft looms large here. He’s also singing more than ever, and he sounds better than ever doing it. Where he used to mug over his music relentlessly, on Swimming he mostly lets the beats breathe, clearing ample space for the record’s peaceful orchestral swells and blushing keyboards. He’s come a long way since his overbearing kid brother act of his early Blue Slide Park days. “Every day I wake up and breathe/I don’t have it all but that’s all right with me,” he sighs on “2009,” even though he only sounds half-convinced. An album with nothing but time on its hands and an understanding that healing is a slow, tedious process, Swimming is most engaging when it details the simple things Miller tells himself to keep his spirits up. But Miller explores his headspace with considerably more focus than Drake, Future, or Post Malone, artists who sometimes cut emotional corners in their rush to the next banger. This sort of heartsick longing is not exactly something new-in 2018, you can’t toss a stone without it landing in some chart-topping sad rapper’s styrofoam cup. “She put me back together when I was out of order,” he admits on “Perfecto.” The furthest he’ll go is acknowledging life was a lot easier with Grande than without her.
Even at Swimming’s bleakest-“ Self Care/Oblivion,” a dispiriting account of his pain-numbing regime, or “Hurt Feelings,” which shines some light on his mental state during that DUI-Miller resists the suggestion that anybody in particular is to blame for him bottoming out. “Everybody want a headline, I don’t got nothin’ to say,” he rapped on “ Programs,” a loose track from May with more of a chip on its shoulder than any that made the album. Miller has long been open about his struggles with addiction, which Grande cited in her decision to end what she called a “ toxic relationship.” But those looking for any dirt-dishing or ax-grinding on Swimming will be disappointed. He’s doing his best to find the humor in a situation that isn’t really funny, as his arrest for a DUI and hit and run this May made all too clear. Miller’s flow is limber and self-deprecating he tries any pattern of singing or rapping that might lift his spirits for a few seconds. “I know I probably need to do better, fuck whoever, keep my shit together,” he ambles over an aloof beat on “Smaller Worlds.” On “What’s the Use,” he shrugs off his foibles over some buoyant roller-disco, accompanied by low-key vocal assists from Snoop Dogg and Thundercat.
At its lightest, Swimming plays a little like Mac Miller’s own Forgetting Sarah Marshall, an amiable account of involuntary bachelorhood.
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