GO:OD AM
Overpowering Tyler, The Creator’s dreamy production on introductory track “Doors,” an alarm clock sounds as track two, “Brand Name,” energetically bursts through on Mac Miller’s major-label debut, GO:OD AM.
It’s Miller’s third studio album, and this time, he’s finally waking up on the right side of the bed.
Good morning, world: It’s Sept. 18, 2015, and Mac Miller has supplied 17 songs, an hour and 10 minutes of material, to make you completely reconsider the name that leaves your mouth when you mention your favorite rapper.
Miller’s mastery begins with “Doors,” in which his raw but oddly enchanting singing voice welcomes the audience into the hermit’s mysterious world as he croons, “You know it’s been a minute since I been awake/ Didn’t mean to cause you pain, I just needed to escape/ They sayin’ that I’m sober, I’m just in a better place.”
But Miller has never been awake like this before. It’s obvious that he’s found himself, with the proof lying in the album’s pudding. We hear just how comfortable he is as he glides — no, moonwalks — effortlessly over the ID Labs-produced beat on “Brand Name” exclaiming, “You don’t want this life I live/ you’d rather have a wife and kids/ Shooting dice with Jesus Christ, put 20 on the midnight.”
The song’s hook is a true testament to Miller being exponentially distanced from the kid who blew up with songs like “Nikes On My Feet”, as he intones, “Everything we think we love/ it ain’t nothing but a brand name.”
Miller’s success comes from this very realization. His focus is no longer on the audience’s opinion of the Mac Miller aesthetic, but on the merit of his content. Mac claims to have created nine albums before finally landing on this one, an arduous process leading to an immaculate result.
In terms of quotability, GO:OD AM is perfection. The album is laden with one-liners destined to be tweeted or turned into Facebook statuses. On “Rush Hour,” I can’t help but emphatically proclaim lines like, “Now it’s Rush Hour/ Jackie Chan/ Chris Tucker,” or, and excuse my language, Mom, “B—— kissing b——, just like Ellen D.” Despite my Los Angeles origins, I’ve spent just about every day since second single “Break the Law” came out uttering the line, “The best thing outta Pittsburgh since Clemente with the Pirates.”
Almost every feature is employed brilliantly, as Miller brings on the likes of Ab-Soul (“Two Matches”), the Based God himself, Lil B (“Time Flies”), Miguel (“Weekend”), Little Dragon’s Yukimi Nagano (“The Festival”) and the perennially entertaining Chief Keef (“Cut the Check”).
Of these featured artists, it’s Keef who steals the show, rapping with a level of lucidity unparalleled by any of his previous work, so clear it wasn’t until my second listen that I realized it was indeed Chief Keef on the track. However, it’s actually the lack of certain longtime collaborators, such as Earl Sweatshirt, that best exemplifies Miller’s newfound confidence. He no longer needs a cast of impressive lyricists to put forth the music he wants; he has become that force, elevating his fellow artists instead of being elevated.
The album itself is exceptionally cohesive, aided by skits throughout in classic Eminem-type fashion (and no, not because they are both white). Highlighting the skits is the hilarious outro to “In the Bag,” a certified banger headed to an aux cord near you that begins the transition into “Break the Law.” In it, a person who sounds very much like friend and fellow rapper Schoolboy Q explains his confrontation with a police officer who has pulled him over: “Of course I smell like weed … I smoke weed!”
Where the album misses (and when I say “misses,” I mean the around-the-rim/practically-went-in/deserves-at-least-one-point-type miss) is when Miller strays slightly too far from the cohesion he’s created. Although “When In Rome” is indeed a speaker-knocker, it’s an unnecessary one. In an album full of emotional rawness, the song comes off as nothing but a continuous brag with lines like “Bad little b—- with her tongue out/ Told her go long, it’s a touchdown.” Additionally, album closer “The Festival” finds Miller leaving the last 3:20 or so of the album to voices that are not his own. Despite Nagano’s heavenly vocals and the song’s comedic outro, in which a thick-accented man named Luis praises Miller, the album truly deserves to end with Miller, the man who spent the past hour and 10 minutes establishing himself as one of rap’s elite.
With few misses and glorious hits, GO:OD AM is Miller at his absolute best. Instead of folding after facing the critical-reception equivalent of being eaten whole by a velociraptor upon the release of his 2011 debut studio album, Blue Slide Park, Miller clearly chose to listen. Although that same listening might have led to his admitted battles with depression, lean and coke, it simultaneously resulted in a dope album. If you’re still sleeping on Mac Miller, GO:OD AM serves as an indisputable invitation to wake up.
