Mac Miller - Swimming

The Guardian 80

The Pittsburgh artist went through a breakup with Ariana Grande and was arrested for a drunken car crash – but his troubles result in a wiser, sadder, better album

There are those years when it seems the only way through is to tell yourself: “Hey, one day, this will make for some good writing material.” Mac Miller has had one of those years. This spring, the 26-year-old rapper’s two-year relationship with Ariana Grande ended; weeks later, he was arrested after drunkenly crashing his car into a telegraph pole.

But telling the story to Zane Lowe in a recent Beats 1 interview, Miller sounded unexpectedly zen, as though he had watched the whole thing happen from a bird’s-eye view: “You ever feel invincible?” he asked, only semi-rhetorically. “You gotta understand: I lived a certain life for 10 years and faced almost no real consequences at all. I had no version of the story that didn’t end up with me being fine.” His arrest, he concluded, was the best thing that could have happened to him.

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Pitchfork 75

On his wounded fifth album, Mac Miller sings deftly about heartbreak and his mental state, capturing his resignation without turning sadness into a performative spectacle.

The Guardian 60

(Parlophone)

Since his emergence in 2007, Pennsylvania rapper/singer Mac Miller’s four studio albums have all made it into the top five of the US charts. In the UK, however, he’s barely made a dent. beyond his work as a featured artist with his ex, Ariana Grande. Swimming is perhaps unlikely to change that, although that’s not to say it’s without merit.