Remember when Mac Miller was just a smoked-out teenage rapper making songs about skipping school and eating yogurt?
K.I.D.S. will always have a place in our hearts, but the direction Mac has taken since he grabbed the ears of every teenager struggling to make it through fifth period has been vastly more interesting. His subject matter matured. He became more comfortable letting his audience into his personal battles through the headphones, and his rhymes have become more complex and impressive.
With his newest album, The Divine Feminine, Mac continues to redefine what we think we know about his music. It’s not a rap album for a rap album’s sake. There is more pure singing on this album than on anything we’ve heard from Mac before. Even when he raps, there is often a melodic sound to it. Mac’s singing voice has never been Grammy worthy, but it’s not that bad, either. It’s familiar, comforting, and the reverberations heard throughout the album give a noticeable improvement to his sound.
The gist of the album is Mac feels strongly about a certain someone he has started dating (wonder who that could be). The bars aren’t going to inspire any “Control”-esque responses, but the album is easy on the ears. Musically, it hits a lot of our tastebuds. The production is awesome on nearly every track. From the trumpets guiding the song along on “Stay” to whatever magnificent insanity is happening on “God is Fair, Sexy Nasty,” we are kept wondering what is next — simultaneously furrowing our brows and bobbing our heads as we identify with each new rhythm and sound.
The strings on “Cinderella” accompany Ty Dolla $ign’s enchanting hook impeccably, and “Planet God Damn’s” space-y simplicity sets the stage for Mac to do some serious emceeing, a rarity on the album. The Kendrick Lamar hook on “God is Fair, Sexy Nasty” is undoubtedly from the future or another universe and leaves us all desperately yearning for a Kendrick verse to accompany it.
This is a rap album I could play for my mom, if it weren’t for the one main beef I have with the album: The album is about love, but it seems the best way he knows how to express that feeling is to declare how great the sex is.
The elegance of “Congratulations” is what I thought the rest of the album might yield. But we were left with instances of “Okay your legs just like a store they open up and you got people in line” and “I’m swimmin inside your skin like a river” (trust me, there are much worse examples). I understand that love and sex are intertwined, but there’s gotta be more to mystery girl than the sex for Mac to make an entire album about her. Then again, vulgarity is always accepted in hip hop. That kind of genuine expression separates hip hop from other genres. Mac is paying homage to his rapping roots with these lyrics, I'm just not sure it was the most snug fit for the subject matter.
Coming back full circle though, this album really excites me about Mac’s future. He blurred the line on The Divine Feminine so much that it’s hard to exclusively call him a rapper anymore. He might make more hip hop centric albums in the future, but his versatility as an artist cannot be ignored. It is impossible to pigeon-hole Mac Miller nowadays, and that’s what makes each new project from him that much more exciting.
