10 Years of Mac Miller’s Faces.
His mixtape magnum opus thrives with a life of its own a decade later.
The blog era is rightfully looked back on as an electrifying time for hip-hop. It may also be remembered as the awkward adolescence of a wave of alternative artists reshaping what the genre was capable of. In the late aughts to the early tens, online music spaces were teeming with up-and-coming rappers vying for their big break. One such aspiring MC, Malcolm McCormick (better known by his stage name, Mac Miller), rode the word-of-mouth wave of his mixtape, K.I.D.S., astutely, scoring a major-label record deal and establishing a comfortable if complacent nook in the industry. But by 2014, he was starting to reinvent himself and was catching the eye of a culture that had long derided his frat-rap flows as derivative and uninspired. To go forward, however, Miller went backward. The result is a swansong to the tapes that launched his career and a project that remains the defining pillar of his remarkable trajectory in hip-hop.
Faces is a mixtape coming into adulthood, with all the hurt and shame that comes with it. While hip-hop outgrew its blog phase, Miller revelled in its growing pains and brought the format to its natural conclusion: the human longing for something more substantive. There are still vestiges of its youthful excesses, and the artist’s drug abuse, which would eventually take his life in 2018, casts a shadow over the record’s hedonistic inclinations. Bursting from this tragic cocoon, however, is a mature pen and visionary instrumental palette ushering in a revitalized and erudite Mac Miller. In any artist’s catalog, most works serve one of two functions: they can expand on the artist’s signature style, or completely reinvent it. There are few albums that achieve both, and even fewer that do so well. While experimental efforts can get away with aimless variety, focused pieces benefit from a consistent and planned progression. Faces, with its unapologetic thematic stagnation, is a paradox. Opening and closing with the same morbid, self-pitying tone, with the horns of “Inside Outside” yielding to the mournful guitar riff in “Grand Finale,” the record’s cohesion teeters on redundancy and self-indulgence. Put any line from either track next to each other for the unfamiliar listener—say, “The world will be just fine without me” or “Should’ve died already”—and the contrast (or lack thereof) is glaring. What makes it work is Miller’s refusal to conform to any boundaries or labels and his insistence that his ethos should lead the way instead. In doing so, he expresses more than just his signature style or artistic evolution, but the very essence of his tumultuous life etched on wax.
It is the experimental and inward-looking approach of Faces that helps Miller’s undeniable talent as a rapper shine through like never before. Blaring horns and booming drums introduce “Here We Go,” where he imbues his braggadocious and cheesy boasts with a wizened air and heightened poetic acumen. Other cuts showcase his masterful beat selection, such as the Vince Staples-assisted “Rain,” which lures the listener in with a somber instrumental courtesy of 9th Wonder before ensnaring them with lyricism that is both esoteric and masterfully on-the-nose. Miller’s newfound maturity oozes throughout the record and enriches the lyrical portrait he paints; even a song like “Diablo,” which at its core is structurally similar to the hits of his frat-rapper past, comes off as introspective and emotionally enlightened. Make no mistake, his performance owes just as much success to his past frivolity as to his current metamorphosis. “Easy Mac with the cheesy raps” is still on the mic here; he’s just using his brain more, and his prescient mirth makes the misery cut even deeper.
Sonically, Miller’s ambition knew no bounds in 2014, and it remains impressive just how many marks the risks he took hit. His later output is known for its versatility and experimentation, but never again is he as simultaneously focused and adventurous as he is on Faces. Commanding a masterful beat selection, Miller curated a jazzy and psychedelic soundscape that gives his brooding the mystique and severity it deserves. Standing out is “Angel Dust,” where fetid psychedelia writhes underneath its nauseous instrumental as Miller recounts a nightmarish trip with a breathless flow that feels as calculated as it is sporadically genuine. Other tracks integrate new styles with expertly timed beat switches that slow the album’s asphyxiating pace. For instance, the desperado grandeur of “Ave Maria” transitions to an outro where the instrumental slows down and Miller takes the time to ask himself, “Have you found a way out?” Crowning this experimentation is the ethereal and psychotropic “Colors and Shapes,” where 808s reverberate across a fantastic instrumental as Miller offers his metaphysical and abstract musings on life and the nature of reality. Here is the rare case where an artist’s evolution is not the album’s only remarkable feature, and experimentation services the record’s overall mission instead of defining it, making the stylistic variety in Faces greater than the sum of its parts.
The secret to Faces’ enduring successes lies in its contrasts, and its three-track run exploring the milestone moments in Miller’s life evinces this fact. “Happy Birthday” opens with rollicking drums and chirpy keys, but darkness soon envelops the track as an otherwise celebratory day is twisted into a snapshot of the hollow and hedonistic lifestyle from which Miller feels increasingly alienated. As a desperate attempt to find purchase in someone else’s solace, “Wedding” continues his psychic dissolution as the love he seeks disintegrates in the wake of his self-destructive habits. All lives, whether well or poorly lived, eventually wither in death, and the final track in the trilogy, “Funeral,” foretells its arrival with weary drums and a haze of ailing synths. Deceptively, Miller’s dry and apathetic delivery belies the rich and complex emotions that this dusk engenders, which resurfaces in the second half of the track as the lines between pessimism and wonder blur. His melodic leanings, reflective of his future forays into more alternative styles of hip-hop, complement his mortal contemplations as he peels back the layers of his psyche with a meditative air and a searing wit. Throughout its more than ninety-minute runtime, Faces shows that there are no answers to the woes that plague Miller’s life, but only better questions to ask.
When Faces was first released, only one of its visages was visible. Today, it shows many more. It is an ode to the blog mixtape and the drug-fueled artists that led to its explosion, as well as a damning portrait of their unsuccessful interactions with stardom and adulthood. It is the artistic cradle of one of hip-hop’s biggest what-ifs and the touchstone of everything he was capable of. More than anything, it is an eclectic and profoundly philosophical exploration of the unspeakable and unintelligible lying beyond the cusps of life and death, of thoughts and emotions difficult to express but intimately understood by all acquainted with their uncanny familiarity. His untimely passing looms over the project, but his magnum opus lives on with an identity of its own. Faces is more lyrically dense, sonically diverse, and hauntingly prescient than it was a decade ago. It is the mark of a classic record to age so gracefully, and to reward its listeners with every revisit. Ten years on, the abyss of Faces’ psychedelic hellscape gazes into us. And it is even more beautiful.
edited by Alexander Malm.
album artwork believed to belong to either the publisher of the work or the artist.