Balloonerism, Joe

We tell stories to give life meaning. Even when it comes to dumb white boy rap shit. This is our story today.

I read a review somewhere that said that the last song on Miller's last while-still-living album, Swimming, sounded like the artist being lifted up to heaven. I've never listened to that album or song (until MMM) so I don't have anything to say about the statement's accuracy, but I appreciated the kinda-cliché sentiment, that the listener is imparting meaning on the song, even though the facts behind that sentiment are not true (i.e. Mac Miller did not know he was going to die soon while recording that song).

The first two songs on Balloonerism, Miller's second posthumous album, flip the sentiment. In my mind, anyway. I am the listener now and I am imparting my own story onto this and so I hear "DJ's Chord Organ" and what I hear is Mac Miller's corpse being excavated and reanimated in zombie form and forced to dance for us like some gruesome unholy puppet specter. The great lurching off-key piano notes feel otherworldly, but not in a complimentary way. It feels uncomfortable in a way that using and abusing the dead should feel uncomfortable, since it's wrong. (Like this comic.)

Oh sure, sure, Mac Miller recorded this album and shelved it, but also wanted it to be released someday. I unsarcastically believe that is true. I don't necessarily take issue with the idea of someone's family choosing to release art for an artist who can no longer speak for themselves. Balloonerism wouldn't sound like this if he were alive, but he's not, and so he doesn't really have much of a say anymore, and so here we are. That's fine. Better to risk being crass by releasing the art than keeping it hidden away.

I honestly think that I would probably care a lot more about these questions if I thought that Mac Miller's artistry was worth giving a rat's shit about. I don't, and I never have. I don't wish ill of the dead. Obviously I'd rather Mac Miller be with us still today, 33 years old and healthy and tinkering away at his goal of dragging backpack rap into austere piano lounges. 26 is too young. Losing any human to substance abuse is heartbreaking. When I talk shit, it's about the art, not the artist. Questions about "protecting the art" mean nothing when the art sounds like this. It's not disrespecting the dead when the dead left behind hundreds of rap verses about having sex with models in their sphincters.

The final song on the album, the eleven-minute "Tomorrow Will Never Know," is not fun to listen to. It's about ten and a half minutes too long, to start. But it's also too obvious what's it's straining to be—the ghostly sounds of a long-dead young man, an attempt to stay with him for as long as possible, the frightened gripping of the shaking table during a particularly fruitful séance. (Sidenote: the Beatles song it should be referencing is "I Want You (She's So Heavy).") We're too quick to ascribe meaning to the senselessness of death. "Tomorrow Will Never Know" will feel like a waste of time when, in another five years, another Mac Miller posthumous release hits us. Why spend eleven minutes attempting to keep him on this mortal coil when the archives will keep him alive forever?

Often on this blog, I'll make pithy comments about writing blog posts while in my "haunted cubicle." Two years ago now, the man with whom I shared this cubicle passed away. All his belongings are on his desk, still. Laptop, headphones, that kind of stuff. There's also this piece of paper that's been sitting there for two years, and I see it every morning. "All About My Dad," filled out by his stepdaughter at some point when she was young. One of those mad libs-esque elementary school exercises in which the child fills out the prompts. "My dad is ___ years old" and "he has ___ eyes" and etc. (Her answer for "he works at ___" is wrong, which is adorable.) The final prompt is "he is happy when _I hug him_." Seeing that piece of paper is usually the saddest part of my day, for reasons that are trite and easily inferred, but still worth mentioning, here at four in the morning as I type this on an overnight shift, deathly quiet beyond the clanking of Mac Miller's final (for now) song, and the mice behind the walls, and the clanking of pipes, and the ghosts.

Ah christ, what am I trying to get at here... I mean that I get what it means to assign meaning to the ultimately meaningless ritual of death. I didn't know Dave at all beyond his penchant for old cop TV dramas and working too much overtime, but I see his belongings lingering and each morning feel his ghost. I don't believe in ghosts, so I don't mean literally. I feel his memory. This haunted cubicle isn't the only place his memory exists, but perhaps as time marches forward, the cubicle starts to become one of the only places it continues to exist. Or maybe it'll be cleared out when some alive social worker moves in.

But no one wants to move into his cubicle spot because they are afraid of confronting this. I am more than willing to perpetuate the myth of this cubicle being haunted if it means that I don't have to share the cubicle with anyone. Which is cynical of me too, but also speaks to how I operate emotionally, beyond just base cynicism. My being here alone means I'm one of the only people in my department who is willing to confront death. So of course I think about Mac Miller's death when I hear him rapping about his own death, both years before it happened (this was recorded in 2014) and years after it happened (this was released in 2025). But this is just par for the course for me. There's nothing special about this specific reminder of this specific death.

Especially when the dead person in question is also rapping about shitting and farting. I mean, c'mon, let's not take this seriously. Don't let death trick you in that way. Mac Miller was a fucking dork and his music sucked. It sucked throughout his lifetime, and it sucks after his life ended. We—and I—have a tendency to take things more seriously after someone dies. We don't have to do that here. We can feel Mac Miller's presence while listening to Balloonerism, yes, but the dumb bullshit doesn't sound any better even if there is a ghost here.

However... I don't just evaluate the music in this space, is the thing. If I were rating the music in a vacuum, I would very much hate it. I still dislike Balloonerism, but I also am able to convince myself that the narrative is worth it. That the stories we tell ourselves is what makes the album important. It's not pleasant to listen to at all, but at the same time, it feels essential that we be listening to it. To feel the ghost once more. To know ourselves a little better. I listen to the endless, simplistic rhymes, rapped like Mac was sleeping his way toward death this whole time, and I really do feel the weight of this guy's ghost. It's not heavy, but it is tangible. Balloonerism isn't a good listen but it's important in the way that it leans into the ghost story. Every rhyme yelled down an empty hallway. The irony of the spooky recitation of "the best is yet to come" on "Rick's Piano," a certain dramatic irony in that we know Mac Miller is dead even if he doesn't know it when he performs this song for us.

It's okay to admit this: the only reason we're talking about this fucking thing is because of the untimely and too-young death. Mac Miller might have continued to stretch his own personal limits, musically speaking, but I cannot imagine we would have ever gotten to the point where I would have been interested in it. The only reason Balloonerism isn't considered a clunky misstep is because we are in overtime right now—except it's overtime in soccer, which means this shit is ending in a tie, and none of it matters. The truth of the matter is that Mac Miller has died, and so we write about his death, and imagine the best in him, in what could have been. And we continue to look the other way when the answer of "what could have been" ends up being some ghostly, ghastly cringe rap.

GRADE: 2 pukes out of 5