Follow Billboard. All rights reserved. On Friday afternoon Sept. The year-old Pittsburgh rhymer was remembered all over social media with fans and fellow rappers leaving messages of love and prayer for the Swimming rapper. Miller left us with a prolific, decade-spanning body of work. Following his stint with Rostrum, Miller continued his impressive run releasing a pair of mixtapes and three studio albums that each debuted in the top five on the Billboard His battles with fame and drug use were the background to his music as his career progressed with fans admiring his honesty with his ongoing issues. He was always recognized for his genre-bending beats and engaging lyrics.

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Skip to Content. To celebrate Mac Miller's latest release, here are 10 of his hottest tracks. Written by Drew Millard Published on In , a band called the Box Tops scored a number-one hit with their song "The Letter. As the years passed, Chilton went down in alternative history because of his role in the seminal group Big Star, as well as his role in inspiring the very good Replacements song "Alex Chilton. Though the Pittsburgh MC and producer got his start making poppy, fratty anthems such as "Knock Knock" and "Donald Trump," the enthusiastic alt-rap polymath has worked to lose the pop style and position himself as a vital figure in the world of sonically complex, alt-leaning hip-hop.
9. "I Just Wanna" (Chief Keef feat. Mac Miller)
In its latter stages, after he began to shed the carefree image and work of his early persona and develop into something of an experimentalist, he became a consummate album artist. Some of his best work, especially Swimming , are best taken as a whole. A precocious talent, Best Day Ever was Mac shedding the final vestiges of his high school life settling behind him, a graduation gift for the four years Miller committed to both school and rap. Famously, this would begin a long-running feud with the now-President, a battle that Miller would take seriously though with his characteristic tongue-in-cheek sense of humor at every turn throughout his career. He was part lion. The titular ladders are the central metaphor here, focusing on striving for new heights and taking hold of the next run as soon as you can. Breezy and open and relaxed, with a focus on live instrumentation and an improvisational atmosphere, The Divine Feminine served as a remarkably confident announcement that Mac Miller had arrived in the third act of his career a very real tragedy after his untimely passing is that there was no indication that this third act would be his final one. Long past the carefree party rap that laid the foundation for his career, Mac had spent the last few years mining his darkest artistic impulses; this was his turn back towards the light. By now, Miller had learned how to let songs develop, to breathe, and started to value the kind of song you could keep on repeat forever rather than deploying his ever-sharp writing in bursts. This was one of the best examples of that coming to fruition.
Malcolm James McCormick January 19, — September 7, , known professionally as Mac Miller , was an American rapper, singer, songwriter, and record producer from Pittsburgh, Pennsylvania. Miller began his career in Pittsburgh's hip hop scene in , at the age of fifteen. In , he signed a record deal with independent label Rostrum Records , and released his breakthrough mixtapes K. Miller's debut studio album, Blue Slide Park , became the first independently-distributed debut album to top the US Billboard since In , he founded the record label imprint REMember Music. Records in He also served as a record producer for various artists, including himself, under the pseudonym Larry Fisherman. Miller struggled with substance abuse , which was often referenced in his lyrics. A self-taught musician, Miller played piano, guitar, drums, and bass by the age of six. I used to be into sports, play all the sports, go to all the high school parties.