The ‘coolest Jew’ in hip hop shows he is one to watch

MALCOLM JAMES “Ma c Mi l l e r ” McCormick i s hip hop’s selfp r o c l a i m e d “c oolest J e w”, although Drake would doubtless have something to say on the subject. The son of a Christian father and Jewish mother, Miller was raised in Point Breeze, Pittsburgh, and the music at his barmitzvah celebration was provided by a rapping DJ.

If hip hop Hebrews are a relative rarity, then live albums by hip hoppers are even thinner on the ground. The Roots’ 1999 album The Roots Come Alive and Jay-Z’s 2001 effort, Jay-Z Unplugged, are two recognisably fine examples of the form, but they are exceptions. Live From Space is Miller’s own contribution to this slender pantheon and it captures the rising rap star — who has his own reality show, Mac Miller And The Most Dope Family, on MTV — in buoyant mood.

The material on the 14-track LP was compiled from various performances on his Space Migration tour, where he previewed music mostly from his second studio album, summer 2013’s Watching Movies With The Sound Off. There are also five bonus tracks that did not make that record. But even if there was no extra previously unreleased material, the renditions of existing tracks on Live From Space are sufficiently different to the studio originals to make this a worthwhile purchase.

Given the task of breathing life into these versions of the Watching Movies tracks is the Internet, the band led by Sydney Loren Bennett. She is perhaps better known as Syd Tha Kyd, the famously “out” member (producer) of Los Angeles’ most notorious rap collective, Odd Future. Her ethereal arrangements and lustrous, jazzy chords and keyboard patterns are all over Live From Space. You might say she affords them an appropriately spacey feel.

Evidently increasingly comfortable with the concert setting, Miller, 21, rises to the occasion, his performance running the gamut from gregarious to serious. As well as rapping, he scats, and evinces no little musical facility by playing the guitar, piano and drums. The audio is clear enough to enjoy the lyrics, too. You can hear his development from his early releases, when his concerns were mainly cutting school, partying and sneaker fetishism.

There is reflection and doubt on REMember, and anguish on the gentle, atmospheric Life, on which he murders the subject of his affection and essays a sort of macabre mellifluousness. Watching Movies finds him at his most boisterous. Youforia is a ballad, although even in sensitive mode he comes across as snarky. But it’s that sense of him as a double agent — capable of sincerity and satire, placing him at a cynical distance from the rap milieu — that makes Miller one to watch.