Swimming by Mac Miller


Graham Craycraft
Swimming is the fifth studio album by Pittsburgh born rapper Mac Miller. Miller had large success with his first studio album Blue Slide Park and has continued to grow a wide and dedicated fan base over the years that have followed his intense change in style and perspective. Miller started out as a party boy with fun vibes and catchy hooks that morphed as he grew with fame and fortune and began to balance life’s existential concepts and the material world. Falling into a heavy drug phase soon after Watching Movies with the Sound Off, Miller created one of his most interesting and lyrically in depth works in Faces. He felt trapped and has said that he only found solace in the studio sometimes remaining there indoors for days on end. After he had some near death, or near near death, experiences Miller dropped the hard drugs with the support from his friends and family and came back with his most critically respected work and third studio album GOOD:AM.
Miller stepped into a new style yet again with his two most recent albums, The Divine Feminine and 2018’s drop, Swimming. The Divine Feminine reached its hand into neosoul and a mix of singing and rapping. Swimming has the same funk and carries a similar vibe as The Divine Feminine, but just amps up the creativity and power. When I first listened to Swimming, I did not like a number of songs on the album. I was annoyed and craving his works from GOOD:AM and Faces. I felt that he had once again left us wanting so much more. But after listening to the album as a whole a couple more times I started to realize the power behind it. Not many of us have time to sit down and listen to an entire album completely uninterrupted, but this is an album that deserves that time. Just like we sit through and enjoy movies 120 minutes  and up this 59 minutes should be listened to as a package. Not to say that you can’t listen to individual songs on this album and not enjoy the hell out of them, but as a whole album, they really shine. This album reminds me of biting into an extremely juicy peach. You can try and fight it from dripping down your chin and onto your shirt, but the only way to really enjoy it is to just let it happen. Bite into this album and let the juices drip down and wash over you.
Like I said above, the album is solid as a whole, but there are still standout songs that are wonderful on their own. Hurt Feelings and So it Goes, display that although Miller is working with a new style, he still has a mastery of song organization and lyrical structure. Songs like Self Care and Small Worlds hold, for me, a same vibe and old style that can be found on GOOD:AM and the two singles he released at the same time, but not associated with this album: Buttons and Programs which are both stellar. Every song on this album offers something different, but lend to the same soundscape that he paints so well. I will be coming back to this album again and I suggest you do the same.

Give it a listen and let me know what you think. Love it? Hate it? I would love to know.  

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