Balloonerism

Artist: Mac Miller

Release Date: January 22nd, 2025

Genre: Rap

Rating: 7.0

In late 2015, a 23-year-old musical shapeshifter dropped a woozy, slowed-down cover of a certain piano man’s classic about life moving too fast—let’s call it “Vienna,” but imagine it filtered through a foggy car window at 3 a.m. Around that time, he’d also secretly recorded a batch of tracks steeped in the same drowsy existentialism, including gems like “Mrs. Deborah Downer” (a jazzy, bass-thick daydream where his voice slurs like melted caramel) and “Stoned” (a hazy groove that somehow turns existential dread into a backyard hammock vibe). These songs were shelved for a sleeker major-label debut, but years later, they’d bubble up as Balloonerism—a spectral bridge between his early psychedelic chaos and the velvet-voiced philosopher he became.

The era surrounding Balloonerism was wilder than these 14 tracks let on. After a breakthrough album that mashed paranoid raps, goofy skits, and beats that sounded like a spaceship falling apart (Watching Movies With the Sound Off), he unleashed two cult mixtapes: one as a pitch-shifted demon named Delusional Thomas (featuring a blistering verse from a certain underground wordsmith), and Faces, a sprawling opus where he rapped about mortality over beats that wobbled like Jell-O. By the time he polished up for GO:OD AM, he’d swapped chaos for precision—but Balloonerism lingers in the messy in-between, like a diary left open on a studio couch.

Take “Do You Have a Destination?,” where he mutters “Rich as fuck and miserable” like he’s half-asleep at a party, or “Shangri-La,” a track that pirouettes between “If I’m dying young, promise you’ll smile at my funeral” and synths that sparkle like broken disco lights. Even “Funny Papers,” which kicks off with a goofy Humphrey Bogart impression (“Did no one ever teach you how to dance?”), hides its ache beneath lo-fi drums and Thundercat’s butter-smooth basslines. These songs shouldn’t cohere—jazz here, horrorcore there, existential koans everywhere—but they do, like a mixtape from a friend who’s equal parts clown and oracle.

Balloonerism’s magic is in its contradictions: the dude who once shouted “BEST DAY EVER” now crooning about funerals, all while sounding like he’s smirking through the gloom. It’s raw, intimate, and stubbornly unpolished—a time capsule of an artist who could turn a freestyle about losing tomorrow (“Live your life ’cause you can lose tomorrow”) into something weirdly uplifting. The album wasn’t meant for the masses, which is why it feels like finding a crumpled love letter in a thrift-store jacket. No maudlin tributes here—just Mac, his home studio, and a mood that’s equal parts sweet, stoned, and sublimely unfinished.