Trigger warning for death and substance abuse
Balloonerism is the second posthumous release from American rapper Mac Miller since his death from an accidental overdose on Sep. 7, 2018. The album was teased on Nov. 16, 2024, at Camp Flog Gnaw—Tyler, The Creator’s festival—and released on Jan. 17, 2025. It shares its release date with Mac’s first posthumous release, Circles, which was released on the same day back in 2020.
While many of the songs on Ballonerism leaked in the years following his death, this is the first time they’ve been released officially. The album was recorded in 2014, over the course of the two weeks between the releases of his 2013 album Watching Movies with the Sound Off, and his 2014 mixtape Faces. For a long time, the album was considered lost. There were no known plans to release the project, and with Mac’s family carefully handling the release of his music, it was impossible to guess whether or not it would ever see the light of day.
However, more than a decade after its creation, the 14-track Balloonerism was released alongside an animated short film sharing the same name.
The Highlights
The first full-length track, “DJ’s Chord Organ (feat. SZA),” opens the album perfectly. It’s a slow build, introducing the listener to the sounds and instruments we’re to expect from the rest of the project. The production, done by Mac and his collaborators, perfectly encapsulates what it would feel like to slowly float into the air; it’s hard to describe, but you’ll know it when you hear it. SZA’s feature, like the entire album, was also recorded over a decade ago. While you can hear the difference in her voice, she obviously still sounds great and carries this track essentially on her own.
“5 Dollar Pony Rides” was the only single released a week before the entire album dropped. This is the last time I’ll mention it, but everything about the mixing on this album sounds floaty. The way Mac’s vocals are mixed gives them an airy aspect that perfectly compliments the instrumentation. The song has Mac trying to engage with a distant lover in a relationship where he feels he needs to buy their affection. He wants to give them what they want by fulfilling materialistic desires, but also what they need through emotional support. The song’s complexity comes from the toxicity that can be present in that dynamic; Mac wants to do these things for his partner but through doing them, he loses the ability to connect with them in any meaningful way.
“Stoned” is one of the few “easy” listens on Balloonerism. On this track, Mac writes about the experience of dealing with a partner who’s struggling with depression. He writes about the isolation and difficulty you can experience when your partner shuts you out, and all you can do to connect with them is to listen to music and do drugs with one another. The song is fairly straightforward in content, but the instrumentation is what sets it apart. The guitar riff that comes in for the chorus is one of my favourite pieces of music on this album, which says a lot given how incredible the production is throughout the project.
“Funny Papers” nearly moved me to tears. Without context of Mac and his life, the song itself is still beautiful, and one of the best he’s created, but knowing details of his death just adds so much to the gut-punch this song delivers. The song deals with contrast; reading through the “funny papers” (newspaper), you could see a sad story of a man who died in a tragic accident, or a happy story about a baby boy being born. The lyric “Didn’t think anybody died on a Friday” sets the tone for the content of the song, and crushes anyone who knows what day of the week Mac died on. Throughout this project, there are many prophetic lyrics regarding Mac’s premature death, but this one specifically hit me the hardest.
“Manakins” is, unsurprisingly, another tough listen. Check out this track if you want a taste of what the full album has to offer. The strings are uplifting, even when Mac’s lyrics focus so heavily on death. With references to drugs being present throughout the project, the album invokes the feeling of what it feels like to get high. Much like drugs, “Manakins” toes the line between life and death; between the beautiful and the gruesome.
“Rick’s Piano” was the song that finally got me to tear up in a bittersweet way. In a 2015 interview, Mac detailed the relationship himself and legendary producer Rick Rubin had come to share. Rubin worked with Mac on multiple albums including Swimming, which was released a month before his death in 2018. In the interview, Mac talked about his experience staying at Rubin’s home (known as Shangri-La) in Malibu after ending his European tour in an attempt to get sober.
Day after day, Mac would arrive at Rubin’s house and dedicate himself to creating music with a keyboard he found at the Shangri-La. The track features an iPhone recording of Mac and collaborator Josh Berg messing around on the piano. In a Reddit post following the album’s release, Berg detailed his experience working alongside Mac at Shangri-La. Knowing the relationship Mac had with both Rubin and substances, as well as the impact they both had on his life and death respectively, makes this track tragically heartbreaking.
Final Thoughts
Balloonerism is designed to be listened to outdoors. For my first listen I went on a hike on a beautiful day with a perfectly blue sky, during a somewhat sh*tty week for me. That experience of juxtaposition summarises my thoughts on the album overall. The inherent contrast in the production and lyrics are what makes this album what it is. It’s a hard album to listen to because of the context surrounding Mac’s life, yet sonically it’s beautiful, light, and breathtaking.
The production, which was almost all done by Mac himself under the moniker “Larry Fisherman” is the highlight of the project for me. Mac was creating music that sounded like this in 2014, at 22 years old. It’s mind-boggling to me that 11 years after its creation it not only fits in perfectly with music that’s being made now but surpasses much of it. With that said, the lyrics are just as impressive.
While we’ll never get any “new” music from Mac ever again, existing albums like this one prove how special of an artist he really was. Balloonerism is a record that’s difficult not to think about days or weeks after listening to it. The unanswerable question I’m left with is, “Where would Mac be now if he hadn’t passed away?” The hard reality is that we’ll never know. We simply don’t know what art he would’ve given to the world if he was alive today, which is (in part) what makes the music we did get even more special. It also makes it, in a twisted sense, beautiful. I keep coming back to the lines on “Rick’s Piano”. Mac himself knew that he’d be appreciated well after his death; as he sang back in 2014, “The best is yet to come.”