With the announcement of any posthumous albums comes feelings of gleeful anticipation or cynical wariness from fanbases of the deceased artists. While these albums can present to listeners unreleased material that those artists wished to put out before their deaths, they can also be used as an easy, albeit distasteful means to make quick sales of an album with half-baked ideas cobbled together, generally lacking the vision of the artists they’re meant to honor. This isn’t the case if an artist leaves behind almost fully realized sounds that only require finishing touches from production in order to see the light of day. It’s in this way that Mac Miller’s music is the gift that keeps on giving, with the latest gift Balloonerism, dropped on January 17, 2025.
I was admittedly hesitant to approach this record due to my lack of familiarity with Miller’s sound. Dropping exactly five years after Circles, Balloonerism still managed to intrigue me, despite having no knowledge of Miller’s history and artistic progression, or the significance of this album’s release. As someone who was relatively late in embracing hip-hop, there are a number of popular artists from the last decade that I am unfamiliar with. While I never had a strong aversion to Mac Miller’s sound from the outset, I had never given myself time to find a reason to listen outside of snippets that friends would play. It was this unfamiliarity that ultimately drove me to taking a proper listen, after which I promptly gave it another listen. It appears Mac still isn’t without things to say; quite the opposite, actually.
Enlisting the help of contemporary funk bassist Thundercat and SZA, vocalist Dylan Reynolds and alter ego Delusional Thomas, Balloonerism is another assemblage of songs that were significant enough to fans who have for years known of their existence. These songs were recorded in March 2014 around when he was working on his eleventh mixtape, Faces, each track presenting a hazy, psychedelic fusion of sounds combined with his trademark alternative hip-hop style. While a handful of songs show off new ideas unheard in Miller’s music before, they are unified with a vision and voice that is identifiably his own.
Following the brief “Tambourine Intro”, the first track “DJ’s Chord Organ (feat. SZA)” features gentle notes played by Miller from the chord organ of lo-fi legend Daniel Johnston, a treasure he procured as an executive producer for the 2015 documentary “Hi, How Are You?” Producer Josh Berg instructs the notes to play and concludes with a “D” that swells into beautifully lush drones synchronized with SZA’s heavenly vocals. Once these drones conclude, the instrumental gives way to a murky downtuning, while SZA raps about a mysterious figure who struggling with addiction, “You’ve been up for three days with one nap… / Cocaine is ruthless / I know the truth about it.” In a track where the central artist has no vocal parts, Miller has managed to make an ear-grabbingly gorgeous introduction that helps set the tone for the other tracks to follow.
The next song “Do You Have A Destination?” revisits familiar themes in Miller’s music about confusion, restlessness, thankfulness for close ones and drug issues amidst a jazz rap beat infused with a psychedelic production style and morphing layers of vocals. While there’s a sting of depression in the bars he pens (“Tryna find Heaven, I get high but I never come close”), he manages to balance things out with enough charm and humor to effortlessly glide through the phasing beat. The lead single from the record “5 Dollar Pony Rides” has a jangly beat, uppity percussion, smooth keyboard notes and funky basswork, courtesy of Thundercat. All of which help to underscore the recollection of a tumultuous relationship, “Let me give you what you want (Need), ooh / And maybe later, what you need (Need), yeah / I remember, girl, you used to have fun (Need), yeah / Now I ain’t seen a smile in a while.” It’s the catchiest song on the project with a memorable chorus and soulful vocals from Miller that help sell the drama.
Following this, “Friendly Hallucinations” paints another picture of a struggling addict losing herself to her drug-fueled hallucinations in search of an answer to her problems, with Miller and SZA handling the chorus and its haunting hook, “It’s only real if it’s real to you”. The jagged playing style of the keyboards and trudging beat contrast with the previous song and adds further to a sense of losing oneself to escapist fantasies. The sixth song “Mrs. Deborah Downer” has a mellower beat of cloudy neo-soul for Mac to coast along on, and his accounts of losing close friends as a result of his worsening addictions are painful yet earnest as he reflects on these losses, “Nothing’s coincidence / My best friend packed his things, threw ’em in the car / I haven’t seen him since (Seen him since) / Guess I understand, he always got the chills / When he saw a room full of rolled up hundred dollar bills”.
The track “Stoned” features a slick bluesy rock riff that loops during the chorus, showcasing this album’s psychedelic tendencies overlapping with Miller’s analysis of a depressed woman who he attempts to comfort with shared smoking and the promise of companionship. There’s such a slickness to this groove that adds an almost scandalous feel to the song, making it one of the project’s more revisitable moments. Marking the halfway point of the album, the song “Shangri-La” is a brief meditation on a moment in Miller’s life attempting to overcome his addiction only to lapse into familiar struggles while residing in Rick Rubin’s studio of the same name. The instrumental are sparse and spacey compared to what preceded it, but it makes for a silent moment on the album that places emphasis on the imagery Miller conjures and an outro from him and vocalist Ashley All Day.
“Shangri-La” also serves as a lax transition into the song “Funny Papers”, in which Miller reflects on names that he catches in the newspaper of those who’ve been born and those who’ve died. The subject matter of the song once again reflects the sad reality of Miller’s own death, but there’s a clear joy for life and appreciation for its smaller joys in both the chorus (The moon’s wide awake, with a smile on his face / As he smuggle constellations in his suitcase / Don’t you love silence? (Silence) / Everything quiet but the music (Music)) and the piano chords that it’s overall a pretty uplifting and earnest moment. This was another highlight for me on the album that’s followed by the similarly bittersweet “Excelsior”, where Miller raps over piano chords and, eventually, the rising of gentle string plucking about the trivial conflicts that children encounter in their daily lives before maturing to adulthood. As Mac Miller joins in the laughter of children with his exclamations of “Abra-cadabra!”, one can’t help but crack a smile from the level of childlike excitement he elicits towards the end. This sharply contrasts with the murky beat and pitch-shifting vocals of the tenth track “Transformations”, in which Miller’s alter ego Delusional Thomas has a brief appearance to reflect a more humorous, juvenile persona willing to indulge in drug usage and braggadocio. Though it’s one of the weaker tracks thus far, it incorporates a voice that fans will welcome and newcomers will be amused by.
After this, “Manakins” starts with looped harp strumming and chords that create another strikingly lush instrumental and a chorus handled by Miller and Dylan Reynolds. Miller’s concerns on death are another painful reminder of his fate and a signal towards the conclusion of the album as he attempts to wrap his head around his own nonexistence, “God is like the school bell, He gon’ tell you when your time is up / Shit just end up workin’ out, why do we wonder why it does? (Why it does) / Yeah, so I asked God to take me on a perfect day / Swear I saw Him cryin’, don’t know why everyone sure it’s rain”. These statements only become more visceral on the penultimate song “Rick’s Piano”, which contains a beautiful passage performed by Miller on the piano of legendary producer Rick Rubin. The repeated mantra of “The best is yet to come” as well as the chorus where he asks “What does, what does death feel like? (Oh) Yeah / Why does death steal life?” makes this song a vulnerable and grand declaration of his fear and morbid curiosity of passing on in what is sure to be a favorite for many on the record, as it is for me.
Waiting at the end of the dark tunnel flickering with specs of light, the eleven minute closer “Tomorrow Will Never Know” is another spacy and bare track whose empty nature is highlighted by the constant unanswered ringing of a phone call and note to voicemail. As Mac continues to ask his unanswered questions of if the dead can dream and love just like the living do, he concludes the album imagining a reality where, “…you could make / It go away / Give you a chance to start all over”. For the last six minutes, the track slowly progresses towards an ambient yet super effective and emotional conclusion.
Over five years, Mac Miller’s sound and voice has withstood the test of time and resisted being swept away with the more stale trends of the 2010s. His direct confrontation with death is still as poignant as ever, and I imagine many listeners will heavily resonate with Miller’s optimistic and honest words at a time where they may feel hopeless or emotionally jaded. Like in records past, Miller’s reflections call for both inner peace and peace towards other like-minded individuals struggling with issues familiar to him. It’s one thing to be a source of positivity and inspiration for those who look up to your work, but to continue to do so through new material after having passed is something altogether different and to be cherished. For both newcomers and longtime fans, Balloonerism is a stunningly great work to behold.
