Donna-Claire Chesman - The Book of Mac: Remembering Mac Miller

A PERMUTED PRESS BOOK

ISBN: 978-1-6 3758-068-4

ISBN (eBook): 978-1-6 3758-069-1

The Bo ok of Mac:

Remembering Mac Miller

2021 by Donna-Claire Chesman

All Right s Reserved

Cover photo by Ka ren Meyers

Cover design by Ti ffani Shea

No part of this book may be reproduced, stored in a retrieval system, or transmitted by any means without the written permission of the author and publisher.

Permuted Press, LLC

New York Nashville

permute dpress.com

Published in the United States of America

Fir st Edition

F or Malcolm

Table of Contents

Josh Berg (recording and mix engineer, producer)

Justin Boyd (friend and photographer)

Just Blaze (producer, All Around the World)

Clams Casino (producer, My Team, One Last Thing)

Karen Civil (digital media marketing strategist, friend)

Quentin Cuff (tour manager and dear friend)

E. Dan (friend, engineer, ID Labs founder)

Nick Dierl (friend and publicist)

Eric G (producer, 2009)

Aja Grant (pianist, Phony Ppl)

Benjy Grinberg (founder and president of Rostrum Records)

Chuck Inglish (producer, Wear My Hat)

Craig Jenkins (music critic, New York Magazine )

Big Jerm (friend, producer, ID Labs cohort)

Will Kalson (friend and first manager)

Kehlan i (singer)

Wiz Khalif a (rapper)

Marc-Andr Lauzon (Mac Miller Memoir Twitter page co-founder)

Cody Lee (Mac Miller Memoir Twitter page co-founder)

Thelonious Martin (producer)

Phonte (rapper of Little Brother fame)

Rapsod y (rapper)

Sap (producer, Donald Trump)

Sermon (blog era titan)

Nadirah Simmons (editor-in-chief, The Gumbo )

Skyzo o (rapper)

Syd (front woman, The Internet)

Thundercat (bassist, producer, Inside Outside)

Casey Veggie s (rapper)

Vic Wainstein (friend and engineer)

Ian Rex Arrow Wolfson (music video director)

On the day Mac Miller passed, September 7, 2018, I penned a personal letter to him. What followed was a year-long endeavor to honor Macs music and memory entitled Year of Mac , published in the digital hip-hop magazine, DJBooth . I had been writing about Mac Millers music for years, but I did not know I was writing The Book of Mac at the time. Looking back on this opening letter, it makes perfect sense that my original parting words to Mac were the catalyst for this broader project. This book is the byproduct of over two years of writing, reflecting, and crafting interviews in adoration and celebration of Mac Miller. I hope you enjoy it.

Thank You, Mac Miller

I did not want to have to write this, or anything like this, ever. Now that I am writing, I cannot imagine doing anything but, and that is a gift you gave me. Ever since you were Easy Mac with the cheesy raps, ever since you flashed brilliant grins on Blue Slide Park , you gave me the gift of language and poetics in a way no one else ever has. I was seventeen and scared in a hospital bed, and you had my back, man. You and your punchlines and Big L impersonations and parties on Fifth Ave took my mind off brain tumors and possibilities of chemo, spinal taps, and surgeries. You took me to Pittsburgh and you rolled me a blunt, and you made me happy again.

I was seventeen and thought my life was over, but with Blue Slide Park , you showed me all the ways life could be lived. I was woefully depressed and didnt know the first thing about proper therapy channels, medication, or admitting I had something deeply wrong with me, and you got me excited about life again. In the hospitaland no one knows this, but since were one big Most Dope family nowI watched videos of you freestyling and tried to craft my own 16s whenever my room was empty. It was so grounding and therapeutic. When I hit the flowstate while the nurses were away, man, I thought I was finally anxiety-free. Heres the thing about me rapping, thoughI wasnt very good. But you sure were.

Then the surgery happened, and I was okay, and you were okay. I played Blue Slide Park as we left Columbia Neurology behind us. And we kept smiling like we do, like you said. Then the winter of 2015 rolled around, and I shut myself up in my bedroom, drew the shades, and wrote a letter. You know how it goes. On the emotional readiness scale, I would consider myself Tinkerbell. I feel too much too fast and then I implode. The beauty of Faces , then and now, was that it was twenty-four laborious, abstract, and deranged songs. You went from tripping to screaming to breaking down love and drugs. You had the words for me when I was my most confused.

In the winter of 2015, I had this itch to kill myself, but I also had this convoluted spirituality. I wore a Kabbalah bracelet and a Star of David, and you must get it because you titled your album The Divine Feminine . In 2015, I wasnt sure if I was supposed to live or die, so I tested myself. I put myself in dangerous situations and through dangerous acts and drank dangerous amounts just to know. If I was supposed to die, I would. I made it into a game because I had to. I gave myself the Faces -rule. The tape came on and I gave my mortality a stress test.

This was all terribly ritualistic, and I was at my lowest, but every time the project came to a close, I was still alive. I had vivid, graphic nightmares and stopped sleeping. Faces gave words and sounds to my nightmares, and when I realized I could finally explain myself, I realized I could survive. Thank you, Mac, for reaching out from whatever plane you were on when you made Faces and showing me there was a life left for me to live in a kindred, cosmic sense that only made sense to us.

I lived, man; we did it.

Even soundless, Mac, you gave me my words. You gave me my life, man. I wrote myself out of 2015 with Run-On Sentences: Vol. 1 on in the background. It was February, and I was still sitting in pitch darkness, but I was finally back at that poetry business. I was writing the best poems of my life, and the first publication credit I ever earned was for a piece I wrote to Birthday. The poem was about living, somehowjust like all of your music and your legacy will be about living, somehow.

I lived, man; we did it.

In 2016, my life was feeling like it was mine again, and like clockwork, your music was right there with me. It was uncannyit is uncannyhow weve managed to live through everything together year-to-year. Its a Jewish thing, I think. In 2016, I was in and out of love and you were very much in, and I was feeling on top of the world somewhere in Bushwick, and you had it all figured out too.

And then when life didnt ask and pulled the rug out from under me, in the pockets of The Divine Feminine , you were still there, still understanding. I returned to GO:OD AM . I learned what fight and recovery sounded like. All these years, man, and you kept teaching me what life could sound like if I just gave it some time and elbow grease. When I began to settle into the reality of my depression, to accept that this is how I am going to have to live every day, Watching Movies with the Sound Off was the record that showed me exactly how sadness could be beautiful and beyond reproach without being glamorized. Your language was always fucking thrilling, but Watching Movies unlocked something in me that colors everything I write.

You made I Am Who Am, which Ive vowed to get tatted down my arm just as soon as I know this writing thing is going to work out. You made a song about the Jewish Diaspora and how you dont want to be chosen, you just want to be left alone. You made a song talking to a void, while talking to yourself, while talking to me, while I talk to myself, and it was slick and avant-ish and brilliant. You made my favorite song, Mac, the one I play for people who want to get to know me.