The importance of Mac Miller: The late rapper inspired a generation of Pittsburgh youth, writes Seamus Roddy.
The late rapper inspired a generation of Pittsburgh youth, writes SEAMUS RODDY
When I was in high school, some of my friends wore snapback hats and stole their older brothers’ Skoal. Some formed basement indie bands with names like Yellow Journalism, equal parts profound and hilarious. Some wore letterman’s jackets and studied; some tossed frisbees and hit bongs. A few were even girls.
All of them listened to Mac Miller.
Mac was born Malcolm James McCormick, but because I didn’t know anyone who actually knew him, I never heard anyone call him that. He was just Mac. One name, one sound, one simple persona — the white boy who rapped and partied and pulled.
Mac died in September in Los Angeles, a decade after he broke onto Pittsburgh’s hip-hop scene, a day after tweeting about his upcoming tour. Paramedics found him just before noon, in his house, unresponsive, alone. According to the coroner’s report, he overdosed. He was 26.
Mac was a big deal here, and his death is a big deal, too.
Our high school was large and because it was large, it was entertaining, brim-full of the basic, awkward conflict of adolescence — knowing exactly how and why you’re different than someone, and everybody else knowing it, too.
In the suburbs, we embarked on a brave social experiment in which kids that were well off rubbed shoulders with kids who were slightly less well off. Kids who looked like adults sat in homeroom next to kids who looked like children. Kids who ate mountains of peanut butterand-jelly sandwiches to gain weight for football had domino lockers next to kids who permanently clutched viola cases against their frail frames.
All those kids knew Mac. No matter how valuable his music was to you personally, it commanded attention as a form of teenage civic currency.
And it was easy to love Mac, because Mac seemed to love himself, and he reminded us of us.
His father was an architect and mother a photographer; he lived in a nice home in a nice neighborhood; he bore his father’s Irish name and practiced his mother’s Jewish faith. He went to a city of Pittsburgh public high school, but the wealthiest one, and only after two years of floundering at prep school. He would have been representative of Pittsburgh’s young, uppermiddle-class gentry whether he was a preternaturally talented musician or not, but because he was, he became the face of it. Most of us didn’t object. With Mac, we weren’t kids, we were “K.I.D.S.” — Kickin’ Incredibly Dope S---. In Pittsburgh, that 2010 mixtape and Mac’s screw-itall persona became an adolescent lodestar, a lyrical guide to emulating the self-proclaimed “flyest white boy of them all.” Teenage boys tilted their retro snapback hats, half-buttoned their flannels, sagged their jeans and obnoxiously hoisted red solo cups full of flat, cheap beer in his honor. They looked ridiculous. They missed the point. They looked like they were trying; Mac never did.
But then, sometime after vaulting the chasm between Pittsburgh fame and actual fame, it became clear that Mac was trying: to be more than the corny white rapper; to not be a sell-out; to live with the lyrics in his own head.
•
The day after Mac died, I was at a bar near Heinz Field when I felt a tap on my shoulder.
“Man, are you sad about Mac Miller?”
The man before me was bearded, close to 7 feet tall, and roughly the width of a compact car. I am none of those things so, in the spirit of self-preservation, I answered. “It’s sad, for sure man.”
He clarified.
“No man, I’m asking if you’re sad about Mac.”
Emotional bar-side chats with strangers usually aren’t my thing. But this behemoth had called me on my vapid, evasive answer once and looked like he could squash me with a single step, so I didn’t think a pivot was advisable. I answered honestly, if hesitantly, in the halting voice of somebody who doesn’t do this too often: I wasn’t devastated; I didn’t know the man. But I was bummed. I liked his music, he seemed like a good dude, and he clearly meant something to people here.
Suddenly, Andrew introduced himself, and said he was sad, too. Not just sad, but really freaking sad, I just can’t believe this sad, not Mac! sad.
Why wouldn’t he be? He talked about how Mac’s music was his teenage soundtrack, an escape from and an expression of coming of age in his blue-collar town.
He talked about how his mother died when he was 16, and how the song Mac dedicated to his own mother, 2011’s “Stand By Me,” helped him process that loss, then and now.
He talked about how as Mac matured his music did, too. He talked about how much that meant to him, hearing Mac express openly struggles with drugs and depression, listening to him give voice to the reality that even if you still got high, growing up could be sobering and disarming and disaffecting.
He talked about his friends — the ones he grew up with, the ones he played ball with, the ones he played video games with online. He talked about the ones who had overdosed, he talked about the ones he worried would, he talked about how so many of them didn’t have enough support, how some didn’t have anyone at all, and how sad that made him, because everyone’s world spun too fast sometimes.
He talked about how it made sense if the rumors that Mac overdosed were true, because Mac was from Pittsburgh, and in Pittsburgh, especially, it feels like everyone that dies young OD’d.
He talked about what didn’t make sense, the fact that Mac was rich and talented and seemed like he had everything, but clearly didn’t, because he died alone. Nobody should be alone, man. Nobody should be alone.
He talked like a giant who had been emotionally felled by a dozen Bud Lights.
He sounded like he really meant it.
•
A few nights later, I went to Mac’s vigil at Blue Slide Park — his frequent childhood hangout spot and the artistic muse that spawned a No. 1 album.
It was a typically gloomy night in Pittsburgh, but the park was packed. There were more than 2,000 of us, clutching candles and iPhones, mostly around the age you can prowl down East Carson Street without feeling particularly ashamed of yourself.
Naturally, we all saw people we knew, and they all had something to say.
I expected the guy from high school who produces hip-hop full-time now to immediately bring up Mac’s influence on his own artistry. But he talked first about how Mac had died at 26, the same age as his older brother, not much older than we are now.
Then, a friend I was with verbalized what I couldn’t: Mac’s death was sad, but being here was a relief. She knew now that she wasn’t the only one who felt the way she did.
I also thought I recognized a guy from Smoker’s Corner — the intersection across the street from our high school where bluehaired burnouts and other misfits sucked down Camels in plain view of our teachers and the carpool caravan. He and I didn’t cross paths much back then. I was moored at the corner of virginity and strict parental curfews.
But we were together again, all of Mac’s K.I.D.S., an eclectic set of enthusiasts, sitting shiva for our favorite star.
A DJ spun Mac’s hits chronologically, from his first mixtape, “Mackin’ Ain’t Easy,” to his more melancholic recent work. The mood shifted from raucous to reflective, just like Mac’s music did.
We were told the music would stop at 9 p.m. and, at first, it did. But the kids cried for one more song, the bros perched on top of the jungle gym exhorting the DJ to give them a last chance to conduct the crowd, everyone pressing together, closer and closer to the speakers and the sound and the moment.
The DJ acquiesced, and a jolt ran through the crowd, but a surprised one, because this wasn’t “The Spins” or “Knock Knock” or some other fun and easy hit. It was “2009,” from his last album “Swimming,” the opening slow and orchestral, haunting and half-familiar.
Mac reminded us that “It ain’t 2009 no more / Yeah, I know what’s behind that door.” It was eerie; knowing Mac was still referencing his place in the world through the prism of 2009, the last time Mac Miller was Malcolm McCormick, the last time Malcolm McCormick came to this park and was just another kid.
After the song ended, “shhhhhs” rippled from one row of kids to the next. Then there was silence — raised candles and lights flashing, tears falling and arms around shoulders. After about a minute, someone yelled, “We love you, Mac!”
But the crowd didn’t budge, didn’t back down. One minute became two and two became three and the park was either going to explode or we were going to stay silent forever. Then, mercifully, someone belted out, “We love you, Malcolm!”
And that seemed right. Those kids roared together for the last time.
The night before the vigil, in the wee hours of the morning, the city’s Parks Department repainted the slide that Mac made famous. It had been scuffed and scraped over the years, made more gray than blue, worn from carrying the joy and dreams of a million kids.
The slide was blue again now. It flashed brightly and boldly against the gray-black sky. It was just like Malcolm remembered.