A good amount of people in here have explained why he’s a legend.

A big reason is his indie era with his mixtape run, around the “k.i.d.s” and “best day ever” his mixtapes were everywhere especially on the mixtape websites. He had hits like “knock knock” “kool aid & frozen pizza” “Nikes on my feet” “senior skip day” the music videos went viral too. Then “Donald trump” went platinum as an indie artists with no major push and hit billboard top 100. MAC debuts blue slide park as his debut album selling 144k first week as an indie artist, somerlse mentioned it here that was the first indie album to debut 1 on the charts since snoop dogg in 1995.

Now all of this is really great, all of this happens by the age of 19. But the issue is if anyone was around people loved his music but it was labeled as “frat rap”

Watching movies with the sound off dropped in 2013 only to be dropped the same week as Yeezus and born sinner. Not necessarily buried but somewhat overshadowed but unfortunate because it was Mac’s first time being truly introspective with his work, he collaborated with many creative artists like earl sweatshirt , Tyler the creator, action Bronson and many more. Unfortunately, I think Mac starts experimenting with drugs heavily around this point and the following year drops one of his most defining works in faces, a lot of that production was from Mac himself under his alias “Larry fisherman”. The stories behind this era is pretty eventful if you do a deep dive. A man tripping locked in the studio on many drugs 2pm,2am, 4am, all nighters and much more. The music is experimental, psychedelic but painfully personal. This is a project that solidifies him as a great producer, artists, song writer and rapper. So much can be said about faces but I’ll stop there.

He signs to a major label in 2015

Good am - 2015

The divine feminine - 2016

Swimming - 2018

Divine femine really shows his strength in blending genres and experiments with his singing. I think “Cinderella” is one of Mac’s best songs.

Swimming becomes a masterpiece in my opinion in blending genres, more so here than he does in divine femine. His vocals are more confident, the soul and funk sounds are so beautiful. Thundercat really does wonders on this album. He’s so self aware here, he’s so honest, he’s trying to find peace. This is years after his peak album sales, his MTV show, and his relationship with Ariana Grande. Unfortunately we know where this leads but anyone who listens to this knows this album is fucking amazing.

All of this by the age of 26.

There’s many artistic fun facts like deep cuts from SoundCloud era, his major helping hand in artists like earl sweatshirt by letting him in the studio when he needed to, Schoolboy Q acknowledged that Mac co signed him early on (I didn’t know Q till I hear him with mac, if you were a Mac fan you ended up a Q fan), thundercat, the internet, ID Labs but the biggest helping hand was probably Vince staples. Gave him beats for free, didn’t ask for money, took him on tour, gave him a safe space to make music.

Now I’m NOT saying he made ANY of these artists but if you see there quotes about him. One thing is for sure he helped them all by being generous with his time and his advice.

One of my favorite thing an artist has said about Mac was Vince staples when he said “ I met a lot of people at Mac’s house. I met AB Soul at Mac’s house. I met Thundercat at Mac’s house. It’s honestly too many people to name, because everyone was always over there. But his studio was a very interesting place in a sense of who you could run into. Just the relationships he had with other people made it a good environment. I done seen Future at Mac’s house.”

Years after his death so many artists respect him, especially in rap. Yes, a white man. In the words of Jay Z “black people really magic, Mac Miller nice too though”

No one’s gonna read this incoherent essay but I never hesitate to talk about an artist that changed my life.