Robakiewicz 1 Tyler Robakiewicz Professor Emily Darnell English
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Robakiewicz 1 Tyler Robakiewicz Professor Emily Darnell English 202 15 November 2018 Mac Miller’s Impact on the Music Industry and Addiction’s Impact on Mac Miller The infamous Blue Slide located in Frick Park buried within Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania was not echoing the typical laughs and screams of children during the first week of September. Instead, fans and locals spent that weekend remembering Mac Miller, who sadly passed away on September 7, 2018, due to a drug overdose that resulted from a long fight with addiction (McDermott). Mac Miller was a highly awarded rapper and hip-hop artist as well as a producer who rose from the streets of Pittsburgh into instant fame. Unfortunately, he was just as instantly plagued by drug and alcohol addiction, which were topics he regularly referenced in his music. A unique benefit of today’s music industry, and arguably of today’s society, is the accessibility and prevalence of the media, particularly in the realm of visuals. In specific regards to Mac Miller, a 2016 documentary by Fader entitled “Stopped Making Excuses,” gives an up-close and insider visual of Mac’s life; while this documentary was popularly viewed during Miller’s life, it was especially favored after he passed. “Stopped Making Excuses,” highlights Mac Miller as he moved to New York City. This approach also allows Miller to describe his previous six years where the documentary describes that “L.A. soon turned toxic, as he spiraled into increasing drug use and trouble” (Cooper). The struggle with drug abuse was not an unfamiliar fight for Miller; the artist carried this struggle all the way through his fame and eventually through his final days, admitting that the fame only Robakiewicz 2 made his addiction more accessible. With that said, the fresh start in New York was a time of hope for the young rapper. This documentary also represents the shift in Miller’s career from being a fraternity-styled rapper to a vocalist and intellectual writer and composer. He had successfully made a name for himself within the hip-hop industry but had further ambitions to create the best of the best within that industry. Miller was on route to achieving this goal, as evident by the gold record he earned on his debut album (Peters). The film successfully illustrates Miller’s knowledge of the negative influence that the music industry can have on its members and his desire to leave that influence in the past. The quote that so ironically has been repeated after Miller’s death comes directly from this documentary. The film includes a clip from 2012 showing Mac Miller working on a project with rapper French Montana; the focus of this clip is French Montana’s concerned comments regarding Miller’s codeine consumption. In a follow-up clip, Miller states “I'd rather be the corny white rapper than the drugged-out mess who can't even get out of his house. Overdosing is just not cool. You don't go down in history because you overdose. You just die” (Cooper). Before he reached the status of fame, Mac Miller was producing music videos as any teenager striving for a position in the music industry does. Miller utilized his beloved hometown city of Pittsburgh and the places he knew the best as backdrops for not only the place of origin for his music, but also for the themes and ideas described in the lyrics of his early albums and mixtapes. “Don’t Mind if I Do” was one of Miller’s early songs and music videos released in 2010 (TreejTV). This track’s music Fig 1. PNC Park; "Don't Mind if I Do music video"; YouTube; Youtube.com; 11 Aug. 2010. video starts off on a boat on the Monongahela River cruising with friends and a featured girl. In the video, he explores some of Pittsburgh’s most notable places Robakiewicz 3 along the river such as PNC Park, the home of the Pittsburgh Pirates and the South Tenth Street Bridge (see fig 1 & fig 2). The beat of the track changes and the scene of the music video shifts to show Miller at a party surrounded by other teenagers as the song is an upbeat remix of “Fireflies” by Owl City. This was an Fig 2. Miller pointing to South Tenth Street Bridge; “Don’t Mind if I Do music video”; YouTube; amateur music video that was meant to highlight Miller’s beloved Youtube.com; 11 Aug. 2010. city and his partying tendencies. This culture was one that Miller created early on in his career and was accurately depicted in this video. The second music video, released in 2010, is for Miller’s first hit song “Nikes on My Feet” (TreeJTV). The video shows him performing in front of his alma mater, Taylor Allderdice High School. Notable alumni that paved the way for Miller’s introduction into the hip-hop scene include rappers Wiz Khalifa, Beedie, and Pittsburgh Slim (Heyl). The video also has scenes from Frick Park in Pittsburgh, which is the home of Blue Slide Park (Frick Park); Mac often used this location early on in his career and it was the inspiration for his first album. This location accurately illustrates the movement within Miller’s career. Some might argue that, early on, Miller was naïve about the success that he would eventually experience, and this song supports this assertion in that some of the lyrics describe him eating at the food court in the mall, a typical activity of an average teenager (Peters). However, the shift in the subject of his music shows his movement from such innocent topics such as those touched on in “Nikes on My Feet” to the more serious subjects seen in his later music. Perhaps one of the clearest indications of Miller’s rise to fame is the fellow rappers with whom he shared ideas for music. For example, he rose to the level of college rappers such as Asher Roth and Aer, who rapped about similar topics such as partying and “hooking up” with Robakiewicz 4 girls. Miller didn’t only share with these other rappers in the topics they rapped about, but also in how they handled their fame; they didn’t flaunt their money, but they did attend crazy parties at their respective universities (Peters). One unique trait of Miller involved his background; because he had such a notable rise to fame from the undergrounds of Pittsburgh, he was able to utilize this background to appeal to the audiences of college kids initially and of larger crowds eventually. Miller was one of eleven rappers featured in XXL's Freshman Class of 2011, along with Kendrick Lamar, Meek Mill and Lil Twist, all of whom are notable, well-known rappers. Miller broke out after this release, and was well credited after Blue Slide Park, which was debuted at No. 1 on the Billboard 200 (Finn). According to Micah Peters, of The Ringer, “he fully blossomed from a lovable stoner dork into something weirder on his sophomore album, the murky, genre-agnostic Watching Movies with the Sound Off.” This was the beginning of the new persona of Mac Miller, which was one that fans saw as deeply passionate about music and highly influenced by his experiences. Miller had such a wide range of vocals for being a rap/hip-hop artist and this is evident in the more intimate live recordings of his early and late album hits. This alter ego grew substantially with his second album, which led to him producing more music and getting deeper with his beats. Around the release of Watching Movies with the Sound Off, Mac was casted for a show entitled Most Dope Family on MTV. Miller was casted to show and talk about his life in the rap industry. One of the takeaways from the show was the way that he openly admitted to having an addiction to cough syrup; Miller stated, “The reality is I gained, like, 40 pounds when I was going to MTV and I didn't want to be fat on national television. I just stopped” (Finn). This is one of the first public addictions to opioids that he boasted about. He didn’t seem to have an issue kicking that addiction despite saying it was only because it was making him gain weight. Robakiewicz 5 He released a dark mixtape during this time entitled Faces. This mixtape was essentially an autobiography of Miller’s drug use. Miller rapped with dark lyrics that insinuated a depressive state hanging over himself and there were references to premature death embedded within his lyrics (TMZ). Mac acknowledged the state that fans and critics saw from the Faces mixtape but somewhat disregarded it. This could have been a sign or call for help. In addition to the drug problem, "I was just pretty depressed," he acknowledged to King. "...I think it started [with success]. It's funny because you talk to people and they say, 'You know, what do you have to be depressed about? You have money and [stuff].' I think what was—you know, I'm 18, 19 years old, going through this for the first time, doing it very differently, and I think what is usually just that moment in someone's life where they're trying to figure out who they are and what their identity is, it just gets magnified and it becomes a bigger thing because fame is tricky," Miller concluded, "because you read what's said about you, then you know what you know to be true, and the lines start to blur" (Finn).