Mac Miller – Balloonerism

If Faces, Miller’s 2014 escapade into the world of drugs, is the intoxicated state of inebriation that Mac constantly found himself in throughout his battles with addiction, then Balloonerism represents the dark and deep before and after thoughts that coincide with such a level of coma.

Assembled together from a weeks long jam session, Balloonerism has always been touted as “Mac Miller’s long lost project”. Despite releasing seven years after Miller’s unfortunate death in 2018, (due to an accidental drug overdose), the project was originally written, organized, and produced nearly exclusively by Mac Miller, under the alias Larry Fisherman, in 2014.

Posthumous albums at times often feel like cheap scroungings of unfinished recordings to capitalize on a late artist’s namesake and efforts for a quick penny – but not Ballonerism. Aside from the addition of one extra feature (SZA) to pad out an empty section of an unfinished song (DJ’s Chord Organ), every voice present across Balloonerisms 1hr and 1 minute runtime is that of Mac’s. In short, Ballonerism is an extensional journey of the inner-workings of Mac’s mind. His fears regarding such entities as love, society and being, are all duly documentented, “scared you gonna wake up as someone who isn’t you” (Manakins), as so are curiosities surrounding death and what life may have in store for him in the future.

The record begins through Tambourine Dream, a lightly faded 33 second long instrumental track featuring just that and no more – a lonely tambourine accompanied by a snare. It’s an odd jump into an album that is as deeply coded and thoughtful as Ballonerism is. That is until Tambourine Dream coaxes itself graciously into the albums true opening track, DJ’s Chord Organ. Featuring SZA, the track begins with her airy and delicate vocals floating seamlessly atop a psychedelic and more stripped-back instrumental. Her signings are chopped with a welcomed escapade of background vocals that play as if they are truly ascending you to heaven, with the words, “watching the world go ‘round and ‘round and ‘round” repeatedly chanted. Though very subtly, the repetition of these lyrics denotes the themes of Balloonerism right off the bat. Miller always loved his metaphors in music and was obsessed with the concept of life being one singular revolving door of events, with the potential to change a person. His final two albums, Swimming (2018) and Circles (2020) worked within this theory. For the first 2 minutes and 40 seconds, DJ’s Chord Organ is both sonically beautiful and elegantly produced, providing listeners with a sample of the trip that Mac Miller is about to take you along through the rest of Balloonerism’s runtime. Once SZA does hop in eventually mid-way through the track, the beat switches to fit more of Millers style, although mac never actually raps on this song. Instead, SZA performs a slick verse with vivid imagery, rapping up the records true intro.

Technically speaking, Tambourine Dream is Ballonerisms opening track, DJ’s Chord Organ is the album’s first full song, and the third track, Do You Have A Destination, is the record’s first full Mac Miller piece. The entirety of the track takes a full look at the concept of existentialism, with Miller rapping bars such as “The world afraid to change, but it changed on me”, and “Am I okay? F**k no/need to let the drugs go/tryna find heaven, I get high but never come close/we still wonder why we’ll never learn to love though/It’s because the air is filled with gun smoke”. The instrumental here features bombastic clashing drums that coincide with a diddling piano melody that plays in the background, as the hook of the track extends itself off DJ Chord Organ, with the words “where are you going’ “ rapped in repetition. The track concedes with Mac hounding the listener on whether or not they have a destination in life, as the title presumes, and the distortion allotted to Miller’s voice as he repeats this question is very well done.

5 Dollar Pony Rides follows next, featuring a far more upbeat and sing-songy approach to the same concept of existentialism. The track reads far more as a fun groove, with these very light piano licks mixed upon a very gentle repeating drum kick that occupy the instrumental. Miller here tells the story of a girl who is unfortunate in life with what was given to her (“I remember girl you used to have fun/though I ain’t seen a smile in a while/heard you’re feeling pretty lonely/your daddy shouda bought you that pony”), as Mac’s charm and lyrics uplift her through his singing. Speaking of his singing, his vocals are presented very neatly on this track, with his more breathy tone flowing nicely over the lively and energetic backing track. At the 2:08 mark, Mac shifts into another gear with his vocal performance, opting for a high vibrato as he chants “Can I, can I, can I, give you what you want?” while the instrumental mellows out in the background to place more emphasis on Miller’s voice. 5 Dollar Pony Rides overall is a sonically optimistic cut with underlying themes of abandonment and depression, yet serves as a benchmark of Miller’s talents not only as a rapper or singer, but as a pure song constructor.

One thing I would like to note is how well the instrumentals flow from track to track across Balloonerism, almost as Mac took on a pristine attention to detail in the sequencing of this record, a feat that I always appreciate during a full musical journey. Case in point, as 5 Dollar Pony Rides mellows out to make way for Mac’s bellowing outro, the instrumental near flawlessly transitions itself into the beginning of Ballonerisms next melodic stop in Friendly Hallucinations. More rap focused than the track that preceded it, the themes here are concurrent. Mac has always had a knack for making the listener truly think deeply about what it is he is trying to convey through his lyrics, telling through the opening bars of Friendly Hallucinations being “Can you hear the whispers of an innocent, ignorant child/In the ocean, get to swimmin’ or drown/How long has it been since you smiled?”. Friendly Hallucinations details the process of how one can become comfortable with addiction all while fully knowing they have a problem, as he personifies this restless state through a fictional girl who’s “Confused with the delusions she’s creatin’/In the waiting’ room for psychiatric evaluation/she doesn’t have the patience to be treated like a patient/But it’ll be okay if she just swallows this pill.” In tandem with this, Mac takes a stab at his own personal struggles with similar qualms, as he raps “Look around and all I see is gray skies/There’s help inside that medicine cabinet/Came in for the answers, but left with a habit”. Alongside the barebones instrumental is an accompanying frequency sound that adds to the psychedelic nature of the track.

The following cut, Mrs. Deborah Downer, is an even more pulled back exploration of similar themes revolving around the underworld of unhealthy drug habits and depression. Instrumentally speaking, this is close to as stripped back as it gets, with only a singular baseline guitar bouncing between drums beneath Miller’s inebriated delivery. Mac’s rapping here tethers the line between spoken word sprinkled with a touch of charisma, yet the overall surface-level-groaning placates well to the tracks overall atmosphere and tone. That tone of intoxicity comes through almost as if you can smell the bourbon on Macs breath as he raps, “Do I need to know the beginning to see the end?/What’s the difference between the truth and things we pretend?/I Lie awake faded watching the days go by/And only at those lows do I catch my high”. It’s a sad reality that Mac shares with us on Mrs. Deborah Downer, yet his honesty and questions regarding his habits are what make this song so special.

After a blisteringly truthful, yet truly depressive track as Mrs.Deborah Downer is, Ballonerisms next track is a tad more uplifting, at least sonically speaking. Stoned is a true highlight of mine through this track list. Once again, Mac tells the story of a depressive, drug addicted, girl who acts as a mirror image of Mac himself. Miller’s writing style here personifies the girl and her struggles in a very detailed manner (“She hates that she cries when she’s all by herself/And she’s always all by herself”), with the hook seeing Mac take on the role of being a friend to the girl and indulging in her habits alongside her (“I wish she would learn to laugh/Isolation, she locking the bathroom door/Baby let’s get stoned). While still dealing with the detrimentals of drugs, it seems a tad less serious given that the substance in question is marijuana. Yet, because it is marijuana, the instrumental here is nothing short of beautiful, reflecting the nature of the track elegantly. Featuring an ear-catching repeated guitar riff (that is nearly Beatles-esque), Mac endows the listener on a truly relatable story, even if you don’t relate to the unfortunate topic of drug abuse at hand.

Following Stoned, Shangri-La topically continues on a lamentable dive into the psyche of a consistent drug user, with Mac sharing eerie bars that foreshadowed his untimely overdose that would occur four years after Balloonerisms completion (“If I’m dying young, promise you’ll smile at my funeral/It’s just a rule to follow/Live your life now ‘cause you can lose it tomorrow”). Shangri-La sounds like an extension of Mrs.Deborah Downer, however Mac adds a more grim outlook towards his future, going as far as to predict his death. While not being one of my personal favorites, Shangri-La still offers a profound and woeful insight into the conscience of Mac Miller at the time.

While Shangri-La was more of an extension of what had already been previously heard on Balloonerism, the next track, Funny Papers, truly is something special. Hell, I’ll say it, this is the first track I’ve listened to on an initial listen of an album that truly made me cry. Starring a melancholic piano melody to start, Miller begins the track asking the listener, “Did no one ever teach you how to dance? Well everyone knows how to dance!”. It’s a light, and heart touching opening phrase from a late artist who truly cared about his audience. Once the track starts up, the bare piano is joined by a subtle beating of snares and kicks that create a downright beautiful atmosphere as Mac endows on some of his most poetic and vivid writing to date. I’ll simply leave the opening lyrics here, as my personal breakdown of their meaning will only murk how eloquent and colorful they are:

“Somebody died today right, I saw his picture in the funny papers/Didn’t think anybody died on a Friday/Some angry banker, or some kind of money trader/Recently divorced, was drunk driving down the highway/And drove off the bridge to his wedding song/Blew out the bass in his speakers you could still hear the treble goin’/The hospital was useless, and everything was quiet but the music”.

Mac uses this story of a man who died in a depressive spiral as a metaphor for his own depressive spiral, as he falls deeper and deeper into the world of substances, stating how he only meets peace when he’s asleep, and wondering when he’ll end up on the other side. Yet, Mac stays hopeful, betting his woes on the idea of glory – a world where he is free from the shackles of his addiction, yet, as revealed in the hook, everything for him is silent but the music. Mac reveals in this song the beauties of life and death, and how he finds his peace in the fears he has regarding both through the music he creates. Making music is not just about creating a steady stream of monetary gain for Mac; it’s his poetry, his therapy, and his release from the world that he is scared of. By the time the second verse begins, Mac tells the converse of the “Angry banker or some kind of money trader,” telling the story of a new-born baby boy he saw in the ‘funny papers’ who’s, “Mother cried with her lips against his soft face/Why’d she bring his bright eyes into this dark place?”. Mac describes this cycle of life and death, fueled by emotion and the outside factors that control us, as the “Sweet, sweet oblivion”. It’s an endearing, charming, and tear-jerking song that summarizes the nuances and questions of life through the mind of someone who has unfortunately passed onto the other side, ending the track with the bellowing of his vocals chanting, “why does it matter, at all?”. In the end, everything truly was quiet but the music with this one, but the music serves as a true vehicle of enlightenment, one that is nothing more or less than soul touching.

While Funny Papers was very bare-bones in terms of song structure and raw regarding subject matter, Excelsior may be the most trippy and psychedelic cut yet. Beginning with the ambient sounds of children playing on the playground, Excelsior takes a reflective look on the concept of childhood – how some have it good, with friends at school and a safe home, and others unfortunately, do not. Mac starts his verse by detailing the lives of many kids, each with a bar allotted to each child, until a character is introduced named Claire (“Claire always wish she was as pretty as Julie/The boys always chase Julie around the sandbox/Claire just waits till she gets picked up by her Grandpa”). Mac uses this expression of these fictional children to demonstrate how depression can seep in from a young age, and how that depression can either be silenced (yet still linger), or can become exacerbated overtime throughout their later life experiences. On Excelsior, Mac longs for his vibrant and youthful days, where what you could accomplish was truly only limited by his imagination, stating “Me, I used to want to be a wizard, when did life get so serious?”. Mac follows this question up by posing another (“Whatever happened to apple juice and cartwheels”), before this very line is repeated until the songs end with an increasingly more distorted voice each time it is said. The instrumental shifts from one that plays itself very closely to that of Friendly Hallucinations, Mrs. Deborah Downer, and Shangri-La, to a descending, continuous, dream-like escapade of keys as Mac loops the phrase “Abracadabra” embolizing his desire to still live his childhood dreams of being a wizard, despite living at an age now where he is limited by more than his imagination.

Once again, Mac Miller’s pristine attention to the sequencing of Balloonerism does not go unnoticed. As Excelsior ends, the aforementioned piano licks smooth out and the sound of children playing returns. As Transformation begins, those high-pitched vocals of the kids are contrasted by the uber-dark and distorted mumblings of Mac, before a minor piano melody kicks in. Transformations is a weird track, straight up. It features Delusional Thomas, Mac Miller’s alter ego, who acts as a worse version of Mac, free to say whatever’s on his mind. Not as controversial as other famous rap egos, such as Eminem’s Slim Shady or Tupac’s Makevelli, Delusional Thomas is more an extension of Mac’s thoughts. This track is one of the only truly forgettable cuts on Balloonerism, with Mac, or should I say Thomas, delivering, genius lines such as “Your b***h is like a bad fart, all she do is linger”. It’s clear that Mac was trying to have some fun on this one, but it doesn’t move me all too much.

Alongside Funny Papers, Manikins may be Balloonerisms most poetic and lyrically touching song yet. Leaning again hardly on the concept of existentialism, Mac Miller openly questions his purpose of being and belonging on this cut through the metaphor that we are all Manikins who inevitably get “dressed” by other individuals. Manakins begins with a truly dream-esque instrumental, featuring a symphony of harp strings that sound as if an angel is delicately plucking the strings. It’s a gorgeous sound that is hardly heard in the realm of Hip-Hop, as these marching drums quickly fade in succession with the strings to deliver a soundscape straight out of heaven. I truly cannot applaud the production on this track enough, and Mac’s clever yet grounded poetry soon begins with the lines, “My good days are exactly like my bad ones”, as he spends the first verse in a conversation with God, attempting to find the meaning of life. His qualms are as profound as they are thought provoking – as I did with Funny Papers, I’ll just let the lyrics here speak for themselves:

“Things that we all search for end up finding us/God is like the school bell, he gon’ tell you when your time is up/Sh*t just end up workin’ out, why do we wonder why it does?/So, I asked God to take me on a perfect date/Swear I saw Him cryin’, don’t know why everyone’s sure it’s rain/Educational system, but I feel we only learn from change/Every time I think about it, sh*t just starts to hurt my brain/Problems we can’t solve always seem to be my favorite ones/Life gets so boring playing superhero makes it fun/But why is ‘heroism’ so close to heroin’?”

In essence, Manikins encapsulates everything that Balloonerism is about. With nagging questions that feed themselves towards Mac’s dire want and need to understand the world around him. By the time the hook comes around, Mac’s vocals sound angelic as he chants how he “See the light at the end of the tunnel, it feels like I’m dying, dying, dying, I’m dead”, denoting how nobody can hurt him if he “goes inside and locks the door”. Overall, Manakins is a genius look at Mac’s psyche and illustrates his cause towards making Ballloonerism evidently and clearly.

Bridging off Miller’s absurdism displayed on Manakins, Rick’s Piano is an extension of Mac Miller’s search for Nihilism. As you may have guessed, this cut features yet another heavenly piano, as Mac constructs a track in which he is navigating his personal demons, but unlike many previous cuts, Miller remains hopeful. The track can be summarized by the above phrase, “The best is yet to come”, which is chanted repeatedly throughout the cut, as Mac stares down the barrel of addiction, a barrel that inevitably took his life. While his status as a public figure and celebrity was growing at the time of Balloonerisms creation, Mac always remained conscious to stay true to his roots and of his ego, as so deadly feared turning into a person who he could not recognize. In support of this, he urges his listeners and followers to look at his art and him as a human being (Please don’t nod your head, and please don’t tell me I made it/’Cause people start to get worse once they think they’re the greatest). He hyperbolizes this fear through many scenarios across Ricks Piano, detailing a girl who spent her paycheck on lingerie but is scared to put it on, and wondering if the blind mice even want to see. Through Balloonerism, Mac grows tired of his constant anxieties, yet it is on Rick’s Piano where he truly looks forward and shouts his deepest questions over an empty mountain range for nobody to hear. His questions are damning, as the final 2 minutes and 25 seconds of the track see’s Mac chant the phrase “The best is yet to come” alongside his wonderings of “What does death feel like/I wonder what does death feel like?/Why does death steal life?”. It’s a dark, and culpable question, yet Mac deserves no blame for wondering. To me, Rick’s Piano is a true masterpiece, encapsulating the very state Mac Miller was in whilst creating Balloonerism, with so much realism that it reads as if you are talking to a friend.

While posthumous albums at times can be quick cash grabs from billionaire label heads, Balloonerism truly stands alone in the subgenera of music as a whole. Tucked away in the vault by his family for over a decade, Balloonerism is nothing short of a journey – a journey in which we are vessels along the ride of the mind of an addict who still holds dear a pure soul. The constant battles within Mac he selflessly puts on display across every track on Balloonerism leads the way for a truly self-altering listen that will make you cry, think, doubt, and wonder. In all, a masterful album from a soul gone too soon.

RIP Mac, the best is yet to come.

OVERALL RATING: 9.6/10

BEST SONGS: Funny Papers, Manakins, Ricks Piano, Excelsior, Stoned, Friendly Hallucinations

WORST SONGS: Transformations