Album Review: Mac Miller - GO:OD A.M.
By Kevin Biggs, Contributor
[Warner Bros.; 2015] Rating: 4/5
Key Tracks: “Perfect Circle/Godspeed,” “100 Grandkids," "Clubhouse"
In an interview with The Breakfast Club on Power 105.1, Mac Miller told the radio hosts interviewing him, “I just wanted to come back with something confident, and something fun.”
It’s been two years since his last studio album, Watching Movies with the Sound Off, where we saw Miller shed the frat-rap persona for a new image that showed an introspective kid battling the demons and drug problems that came with his quick rise to fame. This new album shows the Pittsburgh emcee after having won those battles and starting a “new day,” hence the title--GO:OD A.M.
The album has a fresh sound with jazz piano and trumpets underlining heavy synth-beats that give it that left-of-center, Odd Future vibe: ominously mellow, yet tenacious.
Lyrically, Miller has never been better. His effortless flow comes at you with more confidence, sometimes changing rhythm and speed within the same track. His lines are full of double-entendres and internal rhymes that will have you spinning, but still rockin’ with the beat: “Giving y’all the freebass / Hidden in the middle of a briefcase / Hidden in a subwoofer / Beat case.”
Thematically, Miller goes deep by assessing his struggles in the past and depicting his newfound perspective of life. On one track in particular, he incorporates the theme of the entire album. “Perfect Circle/Godspeed” brings us on a ride from Miller’s start to his present, in two parts of one rollercoaster of a song.
The most impressive thing about Mac Miller is his transition from frat-rapper to legitimate artist, as he demonstrates in this album that he’s not hollow. He puts his real emotions and experiences on a record and made a piece of music that sounds good and has some genuine substance to it.
K.I.D.S. was just a frat-party playlist, Blue Slide Park was panned by critics, Watching Movies with the Sound Off established credibility as an artist and GO:OD A.M. solidified it. If history proves true, the only way Mac Miller can go from here is up.
