In my opinion, the record that forever changed how I felt about mixtapes and Mac Miller is Faces, a mixtape he dropped in 2014. I always enjoyed his music but never really placed him high on my favorite rapper list. But then Faces dropped and it was just so good. It’s an amazing piece of art and is what made me love Mac and his music so much. In particular the one song that really had an impact on me was “Diablo.” A well sampled, haunting and bar-driven song that spoke so much and that was just done so well.
With a sample of Duke Ellington’s and John Coltranes “In A Sentimental Mood,” this song searches for and tells us of the darkness deep inside Macs own psyche. The key progression at the beginning with the rappers vocal quirk of finding the rhythm gains ones attention as he gives us time to prepare for “bar” after “bar” after “bar.” The song is filled with them, but rather than witty one-liners or a few double-entendres, there is more. He has always been relatively braggadocios but now he too knows of his sharpened skills with the ‘mic and the respect he has been receiving as said in the very beginning of the song “It’s the rap Diablo, macho when I drop flows, bar gets raised up” and “rapping head honcho, rocking shows like I was Bono.” The essence of wisdom and disparity is evident in the first 25 seconds or so, with the line “the industry a lie, all the promises were hollow.” His fatigue with the music industry and will to persevere in it is a constant battle for him. He sees, hears and feels too much. Maybe that’s what drove him to the edge of sanity and that too drove him back to our headphones.
He was always caught in between scorn for the business aspect of music and love for the music in its purest form also evident in lines such as, “Tryna find a balance, reaching from my equilibrium” and “how do the famous function, the A-list can’t be trusted, I strong arm them like I play the trumpet.” That specific bar is also prolific to Mac Millers technical abilities and production talent. He always has been producing under the pseudonym “Larry Fisherman” and that bar shows those skills as he completely drops the beat and goes a cappella for those three seconds so as to accentuate his vocal frustration and will to fight against the contracts, paperwork and “snakes.”
Through more bars we reach the chorus; 5 words with too much mass.
“Cause everybody got dead homies.”
While the chorus was written in memory of a good friend of his that sadly passed away it also deals with the loss of relationships of all types to his opulent yet gypsy like lifestyle.
The second verse gains another degree of introspection with bars such as “only god can save him, I heard the monsters made him, I ain’t a star, I’m way farther with the constellations, contemplating suicide like it’s a DVD, lost inside my mind it’s a prison homie leave me be.” His years of drug abuse and his own psyche took him down a dark rooted path, facing demons for anyone is never easy and one can only imagine what the spotlight does to an individual.
Rather than be at peace with himself he seems to let himself go on this track and does his best to free himself from his psyche by sharing with us, who he truly is or was.
He does find humor in his sorrow too with lines like, “I’ve been popping like a kernel reading JustinBiebers journal” and “love I’m making so hot, I’m turning hog to bacon.”
Even in sorrow he tends to accentuate his humor and charisma also heard in tracks like “My Grandpa Used to Carry A Flask” and “I Come in Peace.” “Comedy comes from a dark place,” as stated by the likes of comedians like Richard Pryor, as it does for Mac.
His boastful tendencies interloped with intricate rhymes and moments of sorrow and pain, amalgamated inside his brain leads us to his core-
A good kid from Pittsburgh who loved hip hop, who loved music, who became famous too young, who lost himself to the spotlight, to the drugs, to the demon that is the “Rap Diablo” who in time too became wiser and stronger and a truly great artist, who said himself, “every word I spit, I’m rewriting history.”
We really lost him too soon
Rest in peace to the legend.
thebrainyfiasco talks music 