Going Full Circle: Mac Miller’s Final Album

“I heard they don’t talk about me too much no more / And that’s a problem with a closed door.”

The entire music world ground to a halt when news of Mac Miller’s untimely passing reached major news outlets in the fall of 2018. The 26-year-old rapper made an impressive impact on Hip-hop despite his relatively brief stint in the community, releasing six studio albums in the span of seven years.

Miller’s most recent effort, his first and final posthumous album “Circles,” acts as a counterpart to his 2018 project “Swimming,” an album that gracefully navigates complex themes like addiction, depression, and heartbreak. “Circles” differentiates itself by looking at these topics through a more optimistic point of view, making the album all the more tragic in the wake of Miller’s death.

“Circles” is a beautifully minimalistic project that is the perfect capstone to a tumultuous career for the Pittsburgh rapper. Miller’s first project “Blue Slide Park” back in 2011 received a measly 1/10 on Pitchfork, a prestigious music review website; it was their lowest-reviewed album of the year. However, with each project, the Pennsylvania native changed and evolved, and his final two albums each received a 7.5/10.

Miller’s growth is undeniably apparent on “Circles,” which was recorded before the rapper’s death but mixed and mastered after he passed away. Opening with a progression of gentle chords blended with mournful guitars and a solemn electric piano, the introductory moments of “Circles” set the tone for most of the album to follow: reflective, optimistic, and just a bit regretful. The first words uttered in the project speak volumes about Miller’s state in his final days.

“Well, this is what it look like right before you fall.”

At its core, “Circles” is an album that has managed to accomplish a feat that dozens of artists have tried and failed to complete in the past. “Circles” is a coherent, moving, and thoughtful posthumous album, straying from the path that the estates of artists such as XXXTENTACION and Lil Peep have set. Handled with care and precision, “Circles” avoids the cash-grab trap that has left many similar artists’ reputations in ruins.

“Circles” achieves this through a blend of complex songwriting, beautiful production, masterful artistry, and brilliant timing. In his lyrics, Miller doesn’t shy away from heavy topics such as addiction, death, and his waning fame. Instead, he brings them to light without judgment. “Everybody keep rushing / Why aren’t we taking our time? / Every now and again, baby, I get high,” he croons on the album’s final track “Once a Day,” accepting these facts without prejudice and simply presenting them for the listener to interpret for themselves.

With a close listen, one can also lyrically understand the album “Circles” to be a cry for help. On “I Can See,” Miller raps, “Well, I need somebody to save me / Before I drive myself crazy.” This is just one of the numerous red flags of a deteriorating mental state that Miller displays throughout the body of work. Tracks like “Good News” further showcase Miller’s isolation in his final days, with the rapper singing “Good news, good news, good news / That’s all they wanna hear / No, they don’t like it when I’m down.”

From a purely musical standpoint, this album is also as much a triumph as from a songwriting standpoint. With tracks ranging from being crushingly depressing to giddy and wide-eyed, a vast range of instruments and production techniques were utilized to make everything flow. Tracks like “Blue World” have the bounce and joy of a peppy Anderson .Paak track, with lyrics that provide an optimistic view into the end of Mac Miller’s life: “The devil on my doorstep bein’ so shady / Mmm, don’t trip / We don’t gotta let him in, don’t trip.” On the flip side, a number of tracks filled with airy guitars, soft electric pianos, and slow thumping drums provide a more realistic depiction of what his demise probably looked like. Miller gets by on the variety, with no two songs sounding the same but having enough cohesion to have a real flow to each track.

This album was released just over 500 days after the rapper’s passing, a respectful amount of time to mourn but not too long to sit on the work that the artist wanted to get out into the world. “Circles” was released with more grace than most projects that come from artists that are currently alive, which came as a shock to much of the Hip-hop community. Miller’s family released a statement a week before the album’s release, announcing the project to the world. “This is a complicated process that has no right answer,” the statement read. “We simply know that it was important to Malcolm for the world to hear it.” That was the only piece of promotion that any Mac Miller official social media account reported, and it promised that “Circles” was Miller’s last album to be released. “Circles” was launched into the world a week later on January 17, 2020. It is safe to say that the rapper went out with a bang.

“Circles” by Mac Miller is a complex album. It doesn’t fit into one true genre but rather is a blend of Hip-hop, R&B, and Pop, with influences from Rock, the blues, and jazz. Gliding smoothly between introspective, optimistic, and remorseful, the project manages to do what most posthumous albums never can: give the artist at hand a fitting ending.