MAC MILLER

A SHORT OBITUARY 

Malcom McCormick, better known as Mac Miller, died last Friday at the age of 26. Rest in Peace.

READ| 11 September 2018

Text & Title Photo: Martin Hufnagel

If your first thought is 'too late' or 'not another one', you can stop reading here. It was in 2010 when I heard the song on the radio. I recognised the beat immediately, but not the rapper. His name was Mac Miller, and my first thought was that you need some self-confidence to rap on a Lord Finesse beat that I considered to be one of the best instrumentals out there.

I downloaded his KIDS mixtape that was full of samples from the eponymous movie, burnt it on CD and placed it in the cd-changer of our car. I remember at first, how strange it was to me to be celebrating a rapper who was younger than me, but I couldn’t escape this record from the kid from Pittsburg. Overnight and for the next months this became the soundtrack of my first 2 semesters at law school: the urgent need to party but having a budget of only 10€, self-doubt, driving the car to ALDI to buy pasta and tomato sauce, meeting new people who became close friends, staring at my Facebook notifications non-stop because I’m waiting for a message from that one particular person (and for another order from ASOS that I’ll send back) ...

The years went by, Mac Miller changed, I changed, rap changed, the world changed.

Fast forward to 2017. In a business where most try to scream the loudest to get noticed, it was refreshing to see that Mac Miller relied on his skills as a rapper and his growing talent as a producer to establish himself in the industry. I’ve not kept track of all his releases, but when Swimming was released in August the laid-back sound of the record got me hooked me right away. 

Astonished by how openly he dealt with his inner struggle, shocked by the fact that he looked so absent in his latest videos. 

A few days later, an image of him appeared on my Instagram discovery page, which is usually never a good sign. One click later, the sad news: Mac Miller, 26, has died.

A wave of imprecise thoughts hits me. Is it strange and self-centred that the death of someone you don’t know in person affects you? Also, I realised that there are innumerable people out there who fight a daily war with their inner demons. Some may find a strategy to conquer them, some hopefully find their peace elsewhere.

Thank you, Mac, for your time here, and for your work that’ll be around longer than you had the chance to be.

Hope you found your peace.