One of the most beloved and widely celebrated assessments of Mac Miller’s character comes from Kendrick Lamar on Peter Rosenberg’s Open Late show. “No matter what he was going through, he didn't make you feel sorry for him, you know? He was strong about it. Always kept a smile on his face, because he wanted you to smile too,” K.Dot stated via a video message in 2018. Now more than ever, the reception of the Pittsburgh creative’s music hinges on a delicate and gut-wrenching pendulum between romanticizing and reckoning with the immense pain and loss at hand. Many fans feared what the former outcome would look like. But Balloonerism overwhelmingly quells that uneasy indignation. More importantly, this second posthumous release from Miller carefully and lovingly affirms that his music does not mince words in order to inspire joy, hope, change, and support amid his war with addiction and depression.
Balloonerism's 2025 context shrouds its lyrical dejections and cavernous sonic atmospheres with an inescapably haunting undertone, but this is not a series of late-era demos and thrown-together material that evokes the last days of Mac Miller's life. His estate released a cohesive, intent-driven, and challenging album that emerged from a week-long studio session between 2013’s Watching Movies With The Sound Off and 2014’s Faces. These became beloved leaks for die-hards that never saw the official light of day until now. Still, this project sidesteps the typical pitfalls of posthumous releases whose execution frames tributes as cash grabs and arrives without any real vision. Instead, this Mac LP shows the experimentation and vulnerability going on behind the scenes of his mainstream mid-2010s output, and the results are nothing less than idiosyncratic.
Mac Miller's Vision
In comparison to Mac Miller's other works, Balloonerism may very well be his most psychedelic, chilling, amorphous, and jazzy album to date. It's a high bar, but it's also curious to hear more classic rap cuts here that call back to Faces (on which some tracks from this Sanctuary studio session land). Of course, the more overtly soulful moments on here planted the seeds for official detours into these sounds on 2016's The Divine Feminine and 2018's Swimming. "5 Dollar Pony Rides" and its tender presentation kind of sums up the framing of much of this project. In between many directionless dreams and waking moments, Mac speaks on someone who's going through similar issues. However, remarks about addiction's futility in "Mrs. Deborah Downer" make it clear that he doesn't give himself the break or glamour that many other artists would when discussing their demons.
Mac Miller also displays this honesty and accountability through direct narratives, more vague storytelling, rhetorical questions, and eerily retrospective and blunt metaphors like "I gave my life to this s**t, already killed myself" in "Do You Have A Destination?" There is a lot of imagination and interpretation on Balloonerism when it comes to its theme of dreams, whether it's idealized escapism on "Friendly Hallucinations" and "Stoned" or destructively rich and famous lifestyles on "Shangri-La." That last track, most likely referencing Rick Rubin, is also one of various moments in which Mac either highlights or pays tribute to many musical north stars, such as bringing back his Delusional Thomas alter-ego on "Transformations" to reincarnate Madlib's Quasimoto once more. While we're here, this is a whimsical punchline display with a nasty descending piano line, one of many off-kilter and askew sonic gems on here.
Balloonerism's Production
Other moments on here find a lot of assistance from Thundercat and Taylor Graves on the production end, with Mac Miller's Larry Fisherman alter-ego taking up much of the behind-the-board responsibility. A standout example is the modular "DJ's Chord Organ" featuring SZA, shouting out Daniel Johnston and building warm tones and vocal harmonies with a smoky and grittily grounded approach. As one of Balloonerism's first tracks, it immediately brings you into that world even without much presence from Mac himself, creatively building tension. Even though some of this album's spacey sound can bog down its clarity here and there, it's also exactly what reinforces this as such a unique and emotionally impactful posthumous project. There is a real distance here between Mac's struggles and their outcome. While it's hard not to hear your heart break knowing what happened, his self-awareness here does not merely mope in the mud.
"Rick's Piano" sees Mac Miller reject the notion of a "peak," proclaiming that "the best is yet to come" as long as he's committed to pushing the artistic envelope. "Manakins" with Dylan Reynolds acknowledges that Mac's reality is too close for comfort to his view of heaven, and in isolation, "Funny Papers" is a gorgeous jazz-rap cut that rivals "2009." But Balloonerism's bookends are perhaps its most important musical statements.
"Everything Quiet But The Music"
"Tambourine Dream" may be a mere 33 seconds, yet the near-12-minute closer "Tomorrow Will Never Know" pairs wistful wanderings about life and death with sounds of children playing – a recurrent subversion of nostalgia on this album thanks to the loss of innocence presented on "Excelsior" – a phone that keeps ringing and ringing with no answer, larger-than-life percussion, and an icy and foreboding bassline. The triumphantly avant-garde quality of this project places absolute emphasis on the power of the music Mac Miller created, not the sadness that his circumstances brought.
These tracks' appearances to start and conclude Balloonerism dispel the notion that it exists solely for fans, or solely for the estate. This was a very important album to Mac Miller and one that unfortunately became all the more relevant and resonant with the passage of time. Yet this importance most crucially comes through in the musical evolution on display and what his estate called "fearless" artistry, as this LP contains some of his most out-there material. It's a very hard project to listen to, but it's not one that makes you feel sorry for Mac in any romanticized way. He clearly reached listeners who are as lost in their dreams as he was in his, and it's all the more hopeful and celebratory for it thanks to his passion and earnestness.
