Mac Miller died in September 2018, just weeks after releasing his fifth album, Swimming. A languid and lightly funky rap record, it combined rich, sophisticated neo-soul-inflected instrumentals with lyrics more in tune with the burgeoning emo-rap scene, a place where heartbreak, drug addiction and mental ill-health act as the foundations for painfully relatable superstardom. Miller – who made his name in the early 2010s with laddy “frat-rap”, before graduating to more winning, introspective fare – was well-versed in all three: open about his struggles with depression; when he died of an overdose, Miller had recently split with his girlfriend, pop star Ariana Grande.
He was also in the process of recording Circles, an album intended as a companion piece to Swimming. With production completed by collaborator Jon Brion, it picks up where his previous record left off in some obvious ways, with Miller continuing to gild his inner turmoil with a flimsy layer of optimism – a mode that felt poignant even before he died. Though not as inane as his emo-rap peers tend to be, Miller’s lyrics possess a plainness that occasionally yields moments of heart-rending simplicity, but frequently wither into triteness and banality. Yet when his words fail him, his voice is able to communicate the pain more effectively; he mostly swapped his Eminem-reminiscent whine for a bruised, papery croon a couple of albums ago. It means that despite being nominally a rap album, there are chunks of Circles that bear little tangible relation to traditional hip-hop.
Swimming’s groovy instrumentals crop up again here – on the squelchy Complicated, the dreamy R&B of I Can See – yet other tracks move further away from the genre: Everybody is among a series of rickety, sentimental piano ballads that possess a Beatlesque quality, as well as shades of 1970s soft rock singer-songwriters.
What could have been a strange, even tortured, combination ends up feeling natural and often quite beguiling. It may not sparkle with wit or insight, but Circles confirms Miller was doing worthwhile work, playing his part in the 21st century’s blurring of the boundaries of rap, rock, pop and beyond, and making each form that bit richer in the process.
