Mixtape Therapy, Or How Mac Miller Helped Me Get Sober
Exploring the Millennial Music That Helped Heal a Lineage
When I started writing my memoir essays, I focused on transferring several years of old documents and files from my over-stuffed MacBook to an external hard drive. What began as a simple act of digital decluttering turned into an unexpected journey through the emotional archives of my past. I was surprised to find over a hundred gigabytes of old photographs, videos, and files detailing the decade of my life from 2009 to 2017, otherwise known as my years in higher education.
While revisiting my memories, I noticed that most of the files I had stored were YouTube music videos and mixtapes from Datpiff.com. Known as “The Authority on Mixtapes,” For those who don’t know, Datpiff was a website that helped indie and mainstream artists release new music. Looking through my old archives, I have Datpiff mixtapes from every artist, from Meek Mill to Wiz Khalifa. I even have my college thesis paper on Jay Cole’s mixtape, The Warm Up.
But what struck me most wasn’t just the music itself. It was how these songs had functioned as a kind of therapy for me. Long before I had the language to name the grief I was feeling, I had playlists.
And more than any artist, I was always drawn to my fellow millennial Capricorn, Mac Miller, and how the highs and lows in his life and musical career so often paralleled my own.
Welcome to The High Life: My Introduction to Mac Miller
Astrological signs aside, I share many similarities with Mac Miller. In December 2009, Miller released his fourth mixtape, “The High Life." This compilation of songs sampled everything from Willy Wonka to The Temptations and cemented his position as one of Pittsburgh's standout stars.
2009 was also the year that I started college, and I became familiar with Mac Miller because he was one of many artists affiliated with Rostrum Records, which also housed another up-and-coming star of the early 2000s, Wiz Khalifa. Although Miller was writing from the halls of his high school, the lyricism in mixtapes like The Jukebox and The High Life resonated with a generation of Millennials exploring music online and in their dorm rooms.
As the platform DatPiff and the title of Miller’s album would allude to, we were not just listening to the high life but encouraged to live it. Whether it was the sound of Lil Wayne lighting up in the music booth to Kid Cudi’s Man on the Moon, we were coming of age at a time when marijuana was in the process of decriminalization, and popular shows like Skins made cocaine cool.
Like every generation before us, college was a time of experimentation for Millennials, and Mac Miller became the emblem of the creative possibilities that could come from exploring new highs. Miller’s lyrics also inspired other creatives to build and develop their skills. More than typical party music, like many artists of the time, his work reflected the loneliness that can come with creation and encouragement to push through the pain of production.
From The High Life, it was apparent that he was a talented artist inspired by the lineage of hip-hop and rap culture. Shortly after The High Life, Mac Miller released the mixtape K.I.D.S. (2010), which referenced the controversial indie film about teenage experimentation with drugs and sex in New York City.
And it didn't take long for his dedication and effort to pay off.
Looking back, some of my cherished memories are the listening parties held in my college dorm during the launch of the mixtape Best Day Ever (2011).
That year, several gatherings of online and in-person fans were thrilled to show their support for these projects. The mixtape was released to widespread acclaim, paving the way for his debut studio album, Blue Slide Park (2011).
This year, I got my first tattoo—a quote in cursive that reads "Live Free," paying tribute to one of Miller's singles from his first mixtape and my introduction to his music.
“I know that feelin' like it's in my family tree”: On Ancestral Trauma.
But it wasn’t all up from there.
During this period, Mac Miller went on tour, and my friends and I jumped at the opportunity to see him in concert. However, when it came to seeing Mac in person, the event started later than usual, and there were whispers in the crowd about what role his drug and alcohol use played in his delay.
Now that Miller had been thrust into the mainstream, his once harmless habits had become a constant talking point during interviews and tours, which made it all the more apparent to me how familiar I was with Miller’s persona.
Although I don’t know as much about Miller’s upbringing, a lyric in the song “Self-Care” always resonated with me. In the second whole verse of the song, he states:
“Yeah, I been readin' them signs
I been losin' my, I been losin' my, I been losin' my mind, yeah
Get the fuck out the way ('kay), must be this high to play
It must be nice up above the lights and what a lovely life that I made, yeah
I know that feelin' like it's in my family tree, yeah
That Mercedes drove me crazy, I was speedin'”
For Mac Miller fans or those who followed his career during 2018, this verse references a car accident he had in Los Angeles. This accident resulted in a DUI and further speculation about the state of his addiction, which put the public on high alert. However, as a fan of Mac Miller, the DUI and the music leading up to it reflected the fears and feelings deeply ingrained in my family tree.
While many people view addiction as something to be afraid of, I grew up in a family that was full of people who publicly and privately struggled with the ups and downs of substance abuse. So, whenever I listen to music, I remember my Aunt Janine.
Growing up, I heard that many of the women in my family, myself included, had been given the middle name Janine in honor of her. Because during her struggles with drug addiction, my Aunt would disappear for periods when no one in the family knew if she was dead or alive. Giving us her name was a memorial and a message intended to call her back home.
And eventually, it did.
I remember when my Aunt Janine traveled from New York to visit my side of the family in Georgia. She was funny and full of life, and during her visit, we laughed while she encouraged the family to sing and dance. That was until Luther Vandross's “Dance with My Father” came on the radio. Before the song had finished, I saw Aunt Janine burst into tears, crying for her father.
As a child, I was yet unfamiliar with that level of grief, but looking back, it felt like foreshadowing. Shortly after this visit, my Aunt passed away, and my family was called up north to mourn another untimely death. And while I didn’t get to learn much else about Aunt Janine’s life and struggles, I remembered these moments when my grandfather died.
Known in our family as Pop Pop, my grandfather was a traveling man, and my childhood hinged on visiting him by myself in New York and with my family back in Georgia. With each visit, he bestowed upon each of his grandchildren giant wads of cash, comprised of $5 bills that he collected on his trips as a way of always remembering us.
Between those visits, he would send us postcards from wherever he traveled, and I still have cards from the reservations, national parks, and veterans memorials he frequented.
That was until he got sick.
Midway through my college years, my grandfather developed Stage 4 lung cancer, and after a long fight, he passed away in 2011. It was during my junior year of college, and I will never forget getting that call during an Oscars viewing party in the dorms. It wasn’t until he passed that I realized how influential he was.
As a holder of traditions, he was the glue that kept my family's northern and southern parts together. Although I still had the rest of my family, I had lost a father figure. And though I didn’t realize it then, as Aunt Janine had already shown me, the combination of ancestral trauma and familial loss is a recipe for addiction.
Instead of adequately grieving my loss, I started feeling less and going out more as years of trauma were dredged up from the deep recesses of my past.
Kicking Incredibly Dope Shit: From Mac to My Memoirs
Despite growing up with many deaths due to sickness and addiction, when Mac Miller passed due to a fatal overdose in September of 2018, I was struck with grief once again.
Even before his passing, the years Mac Miller released The Divine Feminine (2016) Album through Swimming (2018) took me through the beginning of realizing that it was time for me to change. Primarily because those albums were a creative expression of what addiction feels like.
Listening to these albums, I could see outside myself and began confronting how my decisions affected others. I also recognized that years of numbing had made me incredibly incapable of managing my own emotions.
And that process was painful.
My late twenties evoked more tears and torment than any other time in my life. Although it might seem cliche, leaving behind alcohol and many other addictions felt like leaving home and family. However, I had gone past the point of no return in my addiction journey, and my mourning Mac Miller’s death acted as a necessary catalyst for change.
Although many people listen to music for the vibes, Mac Miller was one of many artists whose lyrics read like memoirs. Many fans had a more than superficial appreciation for his work before his passing, and revisiting those old mixtapes simultaneously illuminates and obfuscates the severity of his struggles.
Similarly, as I work through my old hard drive, I stare at old pictures of myself and search for early signs of pain and heartbreak. Something that I can describe in my memoir essays or that makes sense of those years.
But I now realize that the imperfect vision of hindsight clouds anything I see in those images. Even as I listen to Miller’s penultimate mixtape, Faces (2014), and watch the posthumous visualization of it, I remember how clearly he expressed his pain in songs like “Malibu.” At the same time, nothing in 2009 or even 2014 would have led me to believe that he would be gone before the end of 2018.
In reading between the lines of his music, I began to trace narratives that extend beyond mourning, mental health, or lost millennial youth. Instead, my focus has shifted to understanding our timelines and where they overlap, diverge, and echo each other.
Listening to Mac Miller’s music also led me to search for other artists who leave fragments of themselves in their work. So now I recognize and relate to the artists who are not just storytellers but healers and cycle breakers who walk paths they didn’t choose while carving new meaning out of inherited pain.
“It ain't 2009 no more/Yeah, I know what's behind that door.”
Mac Miller “2009”